D&D 5th Edition XV: Desperately Playing it Safe [Archive]

Just to Browse

2013-12-21, 01:38 AM

Thanks for Oracle Hunter for providing text that I can copy-paste.

As is (by now) well known to every RPGer who hasn’t spent the past year hiding under a rock, a new edition of D&D is coming out. When? Summer 2014. The playtest is officially closed, so if you were hiding under a rock then my apologies go out to you. Post a request for playtest materials in the thread!

Use this thread to discuss the old playtest, the weekly mostly-weekly Legends and Lore update articles from Mike Mearls, and other news relating to D&D’s new edition.

Useful links:
D&D launch announcement for summer 2014 (http://company.wizards.com/content/wizards-coast-announces-thrilling-dungeons-dragons-launch-summer-2014)
Legends and Lore Archive (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Archive.aspx?category=all&subcategory=legendslore)
EN World D&D Forum (http://www.enworld.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?3-D-amp-D-and-Pathfinder&prefixid=dndnext)
Penny Arcade / PvP 5e Podcasts:
Part 1 of 4 (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/20120806)
Part 2 of 4 (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/20120813)
Part 3 of 4 (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/20120820)
Part 4 of 4 (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/20120827)
Previous threads:
First Edition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218549)
Second Edition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=231033)
Third Edition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=242069)
3.5th Edition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245504)
Fourth Edition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244672)
D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245600)
D&D 5th Edition: 6th Thread and counting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252870)
D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257952)
D&D 5th Edition: 8th Revision and counting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=265084)
Pathfinder, Next, and the Future of D&D (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=271218)
D&D 5th Edition IX: Still in the Idea Stage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=277822)
D&D 5th Edition X: Where's the Craft (RPG System) skill? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=284560)
D&D 5th Edition XI: The 15-Minute Designer Workday (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=288661)
D&D 5th Edition XII: Peasant Militias Can Defeat Smartphones? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=293519)
D&D 5th Edition XIII: An Inherently Unfinished Product (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=298465)
D&D 5th Edition XIV: Hippy Druid Love, Baby! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308000)

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-21, 02:17 AM

I say "D&D Next XV: The DM is the Real Monster" for the title.

Morty

2013-12-21, 09:03 AM

I still vote for "Desperately Playing it Safe".

Stray

2013-12-21, 09:44 AM

To start off new thread: Mearls wrote couple articles (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20131118) about (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20131125) his (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20131202) design (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/2013Feel) methods (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20131216). Also, James Wyatt wrote something about how different setting will be represented in D&D Next (maybe, work in progress) (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20131218).

obryn

2013-12-21, 10:42 AM

I still vote for "Desperately Playing it Safe".

ditto! :smallsmile:

Morty

2013-12-21, 02:39 PM

SiuiS

2013-12-21, 02:41 PM

ditto! :smallsmile:

Me three.

New thread title.

I read that announcement. "The rules are complete". It is as if millions of gamers cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. This does not bode well for the future of D&D.

Why? Because once the rough stuff was done and they could get down to brass tacks for a few months means they haven't done anything, at all, afterwards? Hell, they were working on this during the open playtest. That means that there were already two branches and only ours terminated. Your pithy despair is unwarranted, at least due to what you've seen.

'"Just like a perfectly balanced party"', which wizards got wrong in its editions of D&D.

Fourth edition had great party balance?

"Across multiple gaming platforms", meaning what exactly? Are we getting new computer games? New movies? New novels? New adult literature for D&D (Not that I know about that)? What does WotC mean?

Most likely, it's an open-system adventure like murder at Baldur's Gate.

russdm

2013-12-21, 04:55 PM

My despair is because the playtest has a very "this is a start of our stuff and tweaking as we go along", more than "Here is a previous rules effort that we modified" feels to it since they were changing some significant things up between packets before settling some material in the latest ones. Plus, more of the recent playtests have a bit of a "3.5 with some changes with a dash of 4E thrown in" feel than a system that is duplicating stuff from the various editions.

I don't want or need another copy of 3.5 since there is already the main game plus pathfinder; For 3.5 I can just use it and pathfinder was always "Meh, its 3.5 with house rules tweaking and only partially worth getting interested in", plus pathfinder's core book costs something like $50 whereas Wizards was $34.99 for its core books. And I don't want to have to rely on the online SRD in order to actually play all the time. A hardcover lets me read the rules when I am away from my laptop or the internet which the online SRD makes impossible.

Wizards created a party of: a healer cleric, a blaster/controller type wizard, a fighter meat-shield damage dealer, and a skill-monkey rogue. They then built their versions of D&D around this party. If you change any of those roles or employ different concepts it quickly starts causing problems because apparently wizards don't think anybody would employ anything different from what they chose to use.

Envyus

2013-12-21, 05:28 PM

As is (by now) well known to every RPGer who hasn’t spent the past year hiding under a rock, a new edition of D&D is coming out. When? Well, they’re not telling us. What they are giving us is an open playtest, which you can sign up for right here (http://dndplaytest.wizards.com/).

You do know that we can't sign up for the playtest anymore.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-12-21, 07:05 PM

Calling them "design methods" gives him entirely too much credit. I think the worst bit is the one about combat and how it shouldn't be complex enough to make anyone think about their next move for more than two seconds, though.

The first article, "You shouldn't be able to obsolete an entire class with one spell", if a little obvious, at least has its head in the right place. Now if only the game actually followed that principle...

Moreb Benhk

2013-12-21, 08:13 PM

I found that whole priority thing quite bizarre setting up a comparison with quite different types of things. And 'class features' aren't on the list at all. Frankly if you are comparing 'spells' to 'classes' it really feels to me like you are doing the whole design thing wrong. Surely the comparison is 'spells' and (other) 'class features', especially as spells themselves (if you want the powerful ones) are features obtained by investing in a class...

Unless they are saying that they want spells to always be strictly inferior to the class abilities of other classes...

And wait... what?

"Thinking about this complexity forced us to reconsider how we did things—so why not just use ability scores to make saving throws? This step removed jargon from the game and sped things up at the table. We kept saving throws, but we removed much of the complexity around them."

Saving throws are complex?

Craft (Cheese)

2013-12-21, 09:45 PM

Yeah, apparently Fort, Ref, and Will saves (or defenses) are too complicated to remember, but budding Wizard, Druid, and Cleric players having thousands of spells to memorize is hunky-dory, because sacred cows. Which is especially ironic when you consider that he said this:

Putting everything on the table as potential fodder for the chopping block forces you to design toward efficiency and ease of use. It reminds you that complexity is a budget that you must spend on the parts of the game that offer the biggest rewards to DMs and players.

Just to Browse

2013-12-21, 11:38 PM

You do know that we can't sign up for the playtest anymore.

I'll boil some water and cook that copypasta a little better. OP should be updated now.

Balor01

2013-12-22, 10:29 AM

SiuiS

2013-12-22, 02:02 PM

A few days ago I asked if there is any fully "fleshed out" (monster stats, maps and challnges/DCs) playtest module made for Next and SiuiS kindly suggested Return to Blingdenstone.

I read the thing and it indeed has all that I asked for except ... its purely dungeoncrawl. So ... I'd ask again for a fully fleshed-out adventure that is NOT just dungeoncrawl but something more along "goblins attacking village" or "dragon took the damsel" or something similar. I am looking for something that is not just "enter the dungeon, kill X and voila." Perhaps something similar to "Free adventures" for 3.5.

thanks

... You have to manage the social expectations and garrison of an underground gnome city while reclaiming it. You're fighting monsters out of a village, then helping to stick the gnomes. It's more refugee camp than happy fun sunshine city, but it's literally what you say you want. It just gives you only the bare bones for the city's inhabitants. You've got the respected elder with political ideas, the town leader who yearns for a crown, the fallen kingdom's Crown Jewels which grant the right to rule and are fought over, the taciturn medic who just wants everyone to shut up and fix things, and the baffled cleric who asks you to help solve why the gods have abandoned them. If that's not enough fodder for inter-city social encounters, I don't know what is.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-22, 03:27 PM

I think the worst bit is the one about combat and how it shouldn't be complex enough to make anyone think about their next move for more than two seconds, though.

To be fair, combat needs to move faster. We get people complaining every so often about how players get bored in the >10 minutes before their turns come around again. I'd be willing to sacrifice some degree of simulationism to make it faster.

Morty

2013-12-22, 03:33 PM

It's not really about simulationism. It's about making it interesting, and providing more options than "I swing/shoot again". It is a precarious balance to strike, but hacking off options and everything that looks remotely complex is not the way to go. Especially since, well, pages upon pages of available spells are still there.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-22, 03:33 PM

To be fair, combat needs to move faster. We get people complaining every so often about how players get bored in the >10 minutes before their turns come around again. I'd be willing to sacrifice some degree of simulationism to make it faster.
That said, if you can plan out your turn before your turn (or, heaven forbid, have everyone be involved one very turn) you can have your cake and eat it to.

Again, not in 5e, but it's not like you can't build a better system that doesn't sacrifice tactical crunch for time.

Scow2

2013-12-22, 03:33 PM

The only thing vaguely "dungeoncrawl" about the module is that it's underground. The map given is so generic/imprecise that it's not really good for anything other than showing what's connected to what and where places are in relation to each other. The only place in my playthrough that felt "Dungeoncrawly" were the former palace-thing and Final push against the orcs.

My only complaint is the quest that involves arming the gnomes - It's far too easy to be derailed from a "Chain of Deals" to "Blowing up a city"... with insufficient rules/maps/stuff to handle anything other than the safe Chain-of-deals approach (I think they expect the Beholder to take care of any uppity adventurers)

...are they really trying to speed up combat by making the mundane character options worse? The 'problem' is with the spellcasters, not the guys who can occasionally give themselves an extra simple action or are keen on move-attack-move-attack-move.

AND OH WHAT THE HELL WHY IS HE TRYING TO NERF THE IMPORTANCE OF FEATS? STAHP MIKEY STAHP!
... I really don't like his ranking system. The order should be Classes-Feats-Spells-Backgrounds-Race. Classes first is a good idea - but Feats, being the second-rarest resource (Without multiclassing. Multiclassing, it's the rarest), should have priorty over spells, which are common, and almost everything should have a priority over Race (Despite being rarest), which a lot of players pick for cosmetic/fluff purposes, not hard crunch.

EDIT: oh, not as bad as it looked, and I honestly agree with the principal - A round is only 6 seconds, and you need 2 of those to think and 4 to act on those thoughts. Move-attack-move-attack-move fits into that, as do most martial options. The problem is applying it to spellcasters.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-22, 03:51 PM

That said, if you can plan out your turn before your turn (or, heaven forbid, have everyone be involved one very turn) you can have your cake and eat it to.

A lot of the players I've played with are for whatever reason unwilling to do this, sometimes deciding to check their media devices (texts, email, facebook) during "off time". That extra time spent thinking is a tradeoff.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-22, 04:47 PM

A lot of the players I've played with are for whatever reason unwilling to do this, sometimes deciding to check their media devices (texts, email, facebook) during "off time". That extra time spent thinking is a tradeoff.
That's about as rude as checking your media during dinner or while playing charades :smallyuk:

That's a people-problem, not a game problem.

Perseus

2013-12-22, 10:31 PM

That's about as rude as checking your media during dinner or while playing charades :smallyuk:

That's a people-problem, not a game problem.

Well now days it is less rude and more of a social norm. I dont like it in my games and I tell people up front that if they dont respond on their turn due to stuff like texting or being on facebook or something then their action is a full defense for the turn.

Slightly harsh but to many times the group got the wait a minute pointer finger in the air from someone on facebook.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-22, 10:37 PM

Well now days it is less rude and more of a social norm. I dont like it in my games and I tell people up front that if they dont respond on their turn due to stuff like texting or being on facebook or something then their action is a full defense for the turn.

Slightly harsh but to many times the group got the wait a minute pointer finger in the air from someone on facebook.
Kids these days :smallsigh:

If you're in a group activity, it is your responsibility to pay attention to what is going on. If that activity requires (or promotes) group participation at multiple phases of play, then you best be participating instead of "checking out."

If you're checking out because you're bored, well, bring that up with the Master of Ceremonies. But "checking out" just because the attention isn't currently on you is rude!

Seerow

2013-12-22, 10:51 PM

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-22, 11:21 PM

My table used to have a really bad problem with some players playing flash games between their turns (curse you tower defense!).

After banning all electronics for a half dozen or so sessions, people got used to interacting normally, and we were able to ease the electronics back in for things like game reference, and haven't had a problem in the several years since (Though we also haven't had any new players in that time).
I'll be honest: I'm no saint when it comes to this area either.
For reasons of ease and economy, I keep all my character sheets on my laptop. Since I am usually the group's DM, I double as their Rules Encyclopedia so it helps to be able to look up things on the fly (through legitimate sources I assure you!).

But when it comes to D&D, I have absolutely nothing to do between my turns. In 3.X it was worst because I played a mundane character (so at higher levels I was usually out of the fight for rounds at a time) but if I wasn't playing a character with Immediate Actions in 4e I would just zone out during battles.

And yet I was frequently the quickest Player at taking my turn. Why? Because I knew what my character could do and was capable of quickly analyzing the current battlefield. So when my turn came up I'd glance at the battlemat, maybe ask one or two questions (e.g. "hey, anyone need a heal?") and then take my action.

But that's me. Some people can be raptly fixed in the game and still take minutes to declare a single Action. That said, I never tolerate distracted people at my tables. If it's my fault (and it often is) I do my best to bring the bored people back into the game. But I have been known to be quite harsh to people who deliberately "check out" at my table for no reason.

Seerow

2013-12-22, 11:41 PM

I'll be honest: I'm no saint when it comes to this area either.
For reasons of ease and economy, I keep all my character sheets on my laptop. Since I am usually the group's DM, I double as their Rules Encyclopedia so it helps to be able to look up things on the fly (through legitimate sources I assure you!).

But when it comes to D&D, I have absolutely nothing to do between my turns. In 3.X it was worst because I played a mundane character (so at higher levels I was usually out of the fight for rounds at a time) but if I wasn't playing a character with Immediate Actions in 4e I would just zone out during battles.

And yet I was frequently the quickest Player at taking my turn. Why? Because I knew what my character could do and was capable of quickly analyzing the current battlefield. So when my turn came up I'd glance at the battlemat, maybe ask one or two questions (e.g. "hey, anyone need a heal?") and then take my action.

But that's me. Some people can be raptly fixed in the game and still take minutes to declare a single Action. That said, I never tolerate distracted people at my tables. If it's my fault (and it often is) I do my best to bring the bored people back into the game. But I have been known to be quite harsh to people who deliberately "check out" at my table for no reason.

Yeah the delay factor is very much a hit and miss thing depending on the person. However, players not paying attention at all can be annoying even if they are able to make snap decisions due to playing characters with few options and the ability to quickly check the map and figure out what to do. For example, I think the point where we drew the line was during a climactic fight at some point one player looks up from his laptop and asks in all seriousness "Is the dragon dead yet?". If we'd prompted him with "Your turn" he would have gone ahead and taken a shot, and gone back to whatever he was doing, without any real disruption. But the sheer disrespect of paying so little attention during what should have been a pretty tense situation immediately threw everyone else out of the game.

Well that and the GM at that point got fed up and walked out. The next session was where we got serious about the issue.

andresrhoodie

2013-12-23, 03:35 AM

Kids these days :smallsigh:

If you're in a group activity, it is your responsibility to pay attention to what is going on. If that activity requires (or promotes) group participation at multiple phases of play, then you best be participating instead of "checking out."

If you're checking out because you're bored, well, bring that up with the Master of Ceremonies. But "checking out" just because the attention isn't currently on you is rude!

LOL I'm the DM and I text while everyone is deciding what to do and sometimes between turns at the end of the night.

Yeah gaming is fun but ultimately if my girlfriend texts me... well she's more fun then anyone else at that table. So I'm gonna answer. Just like we play at one of the players houses and if his GF comes out and asks him something or to help with something we take a pause for a few minutes.

Grown up life doesnt end when you sit down at table and our real life relationships and responsibilities are more important then a game.

If some DM told me to leave my phone at the door when the game started I would tell him to kiss me where its always dark and walk. Thats totally unreasonable.

Just to Browse

2013-12-23, 05:32 AM

Yeah gaming is fun but ultimately if my girlfriend texts me... well she's more fun then anyone else at that table.

Burn, Heretic.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-12-23, 06:30 AM

LOL I'm the DM and I text while everyone is deciding what to do and sometimes between turns at the end of the night.

Yeah gaming is fun but ultimately if my girlfriend texts me... well she's more fun then anyone else at that table. So I'm gonna answer. Just like we play at one of the players houses and if his GF comes out and asks him something or to help with something we take a pause for a few minutes.

Grown up life doesnt end when you sit down at table and our real life relationships and responsibilities are more important then a game.

If some DM told me to leave my phone at the door when the game started I would tell him to kiss me where its always dark and walk. Thats totally unreasonable.

There's a difference between "This game is not more important than real life" and "This game is not worth taking seriously in the slightest." Interrupting the game because your girlfriend's mother is in the hospital and you need to go support her is one thing: Interrupting the game because your girlfriend is lonely and wants to jabber on the phone with you for 20 minutes is another. If you can't put aside a few hours each week where you're free from distractions, then maybe roleplaying games aren't for you.

SiuiS

2013-12-23, 07:08 AM

To be fair, combat needs to move faster. We get people complaining every so often about how players get bored in the >10 minutes before their turns come around again. I'd be willing to sacrifice some degree of simulationism to make it faster.

That's a problem with immersion, not system. You should be paying attention to what is happening. Every move affects your own.

A lot of the players I've played with are for whatever reason unwilling to do this, sometimes deciding to check their media devices (texts, email, facebook) during "off time". That extra time spent thinking is a tradeoff.

I find that quite irritating, /if/ tr person isn't capable of handling it. I am an adult. They are adults. This is an obligation; I have taken time out of my life that is not doing chores, not working, nt filig taxes, etc., to have time to sit and enjoy an engaging mental exercise and gamble with you. I expect you to have the same level of commitment, because this six hours? It is the only six hours this fortnight I have. It is disrespectful in the extreme to use up /my/ time doing things that you should be doing on your own.

It's a game, but it's also a game I have to bend my schedule as an adult to accommodate. That highschool phone checking passive aggressive competition stuff? Ten years ago sweetie, in highschool. Not here.

Well now days it is less rude and more of a social norm. I dont like it in my games and I tell people up front that if they dont respond on their turn due to stuff like texting or being on facebook or something then their action is a full defense for the turn.

Slightly harsh but to many times the group got the wait a minute pointer finger in the air from someone on facebook.

Aye. I have a friend whose DM has this thing, he'll go around the table and point, and shoot off 'move act pass move act pass pick!' And you pick something immediately. Stalling or 'uh' count as pass.

This highlights two things. One, shaking complacency. Two, tone and its effects. I've ramped up participation at my table simply by leaning in and talking fast, like I was excited. I try to prevent reclining and leaning back during engaging scenes because of somatopsychic feedback; relaxed postures cause relaxation and disinterest. Just getting into the game myself brought my players (and once, players and my DM) into the game with me.

A social cure for a social ill.

LOL I'm the DM and I text while everyone is deciding what to do and sometimes between turns at the end of the night.

Yeah gaming is fun but ultimately if my girlfriend texts me... well she's more fun then anyone else at that table. So I'm gonna answer. Just like we play at one of the players houses and if his GF comes out and asks him something or to help with something we take a pause for a few minutes.

Grown up life doesnt end when you sit down at table and our real life relationships and responsibilities are more important then a game.

If some DM told me to leave my phone at the door when the game started I would tell him to kiss me where its always dark and walk. Thats totally unreasonable.

There is no difference between adult life and game time. It is just like any other group activity. I of you show up to yoga class or Kung fu lessons, you stay off your phone. You show up to a dinner date, you stay off your phone. Your grandma shows up for a visit, you stay off your phone.

This is a group agreement to come together and get something done for the enjoyment of all. I have no time for social posturing like specifically showing Up to an agreed-on function and holding out. You want to not participate, don't show.

I'm not saying the game is all, or anything; we're here for fun. So if the entire game breaks down into old movie quotes, side conversations, reminiscing and ordering Chinese, cool! If the game is at a halt because any one person isn't mature enough to be invested in an activity that requires investment, the first time is understandable. After that, you are explicitly disrespecting everyone else there. You won't be coming back, no matter how feel-good telling me to shove my social contract into my digestive area might be.

Doug Lampert

2013-12-23, 12:17 PM

Burn, Heretic.

Or he could find a girlfriend who games.

Seriously, my group has 3 women and 4 men, two of the women are married to two of the men (including one to me), neither of these marriages existed when we started gaming togather.

If my wife wants to talk to me during the game it's usually to say something like "I move adjacent and punch her". Strangely this does not interfere with the game at all.

When I go into a gameroom at a store or convention the sex ratio is increasingly close to even on average, with occasional cases where the girls have the guys outnumbered.

But here's the thing, I play bridge with my father once a week, my wife doesn't play, she doesn't phone me at the duplicate club unless it's an emergency (and if she does call she'll need to use the club number, because my phone is off). She goes to church without me, and turns off her phone while she's there. She does Embroiderer's Guild of America stuff several times per month, I only call her there if I think it's an emergency, and when she was out of town on an EGA thing when they decided to remove my appendix I specifically said in my phone message to her "don't bother to come home, I'll be fine" and it was a message because she was with other people at a social function and so had turned her phone off even knowing I was sick. We both agree the other one is more important than any of these activities, but our alone time together is the time that we're alone together. Not the time when we're doing something with someone else.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-23, 01:23 PM

Burn, Heretic.

Why not both?

Lots of gamers get into romantic relationships via gaming. One of my GMs was fooling around with like ~6/7 women at his table (plus 3-4 more who would just come to watch the game), at one time or another. I've seen quite a few couples gaming together aside from that, I hear about some married couples who play RPGs (a few on this forum, even with kids too) and one of my girlfriends actually hooked me up with a group she was playing in.

I used to think that it would fall under the "don't date your coworkers" rule, but it tends to work out well when people can handle it maturely.

Chaoticag

2013-12-23, 03:32 PM

SassyQuatch

2013-12-23, 07:54 PM

Well, this was kinda a bummer. I just got my hands on Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, and found out that it comes with pregens rather than character creation rules. Kinda wanna run the game for a couple of friends, so does anyone have the last playtest packet? I at least wanna give the system a try before I likely commit more money to it.
What are you talking abou- oh, the topic.

Honestly, until release things are going to keep changing. The packets might be similar to the final product or not. Kind of impossible to get a feel for the game until after it's released and some reviews come in.

Seerow

2013-12-23, 08:21 PM

What are you talking abou- oh, the topic.

Honestly, until release things are going to keep changing. The packets might be similar to the final product or not. Kind of impossible to get a feel for the game until after it's released and some reviews come in.

The game will come out, and anyone complaining will be told to wait for the new module supplements.

New module supplements come out, and anyone complaining will be told to wait for the .5 edition.

The .5 edition will come out, and anyone complaining will be told to wait for the next edition.

At no point will it ever be a functional ruleset anybody is allowed to have an opinion on.

russdm

2013-12-23, 08:35 PM

The game will come out, and anyone complaining will be told to wait for the new module supplements.

New module supplements come out, and anyone complaining will be told to wait for the .5 edition.

The .5 edition will come out, and anyone complaining will be told to wait for the next edition.

At no point will it ever be a functional ruleset anybody is allowed to have an opinion on.

That actually sounds accurate to some extent even if it is sarcastic. Of course, instead of complaining you could go back to the edition you prefer most. This won't help Wizards any, but that isn't really important to me though.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-23, 09:55 PM

Of course, instead of complaining you could go back to the edition you prefer most. This won't help Wizards any, but that isn't really important to me though.

It does help them if they get sales from PDFs of the old editions.

andresrhoodie

2013-12-24, 01:03 AM

There's a difference between "This game is not more important than real life" and "This game is not worth taking seriously in the slightest." Interrupting the game because your girlfriend's mother is in the hospital and you need to go support her is one thing: Interrupting the game because your girlfriend is lonely and wants to jabber on the phone with you for 20 minutes is another.

Thats why we text. Everyones ringer is off and it doesnt bother anyone.

Hell between smoke breaks, bathroom breaks, up to get a beer or snack breaks, wait gotta plug in my laptop or phone breaks (lots of us use apps), wait some jag off split the party again breaks, and general off topic banter in a big group I doubt we usually go more then 10 or 15 minutes uninterrupted in the best of times.

The game is just an activity to keep us busy while we drink and hang out with friends. You dont have to be completely zoned into game mode for 8 hours at a time to be playing the game right.

Scow2

2013-12-24, 02:49 AM

Thats why we text. Everyones ringer is off and it doesnt bother anyone.Yes, it does.

Zrak

2013-12-24, 03:08 AM

I think the point at which it becomes rude to stop paying attention to the table and start paying attention to something else really depends on the table. Once, when I lived really close to a bar, I went down the street and had a beer while the druid and summoner took their turns. No joke. I made it back before the enemies had even started.

Perseus

2013-12-24, 09:15 AM

Yes, it does.

Yeah and if you bring anything up then you seem like the bad guy.

I'm so glad my wife and I aren't desperately attached to the hip and yet are best friends. None of this silly "omg I'm lonely text meeeee" crap. There is something wrong if you can't go a few hours without talking to your significant other, maybe they need a hobby too?

Kurald Galain

2013-12-24, 09:23 AM

I think the main point is that everybody on the table should share more-or-less the same expectations with regards to distractive devices.

FWIW, around here we don't do phone calls or texting or playing other games. Some people do have laptops or tablets which they use for their character sheet and occasionally looking something up on the internet, but that's generally something relevant to gameplay. Playing a different game on the side, be it MtG or Angry Birds, would not be appreciated. But I know some groups to be way more casual than that, too.

Chaoticag

2013-12-24, 10:34 AM

Honestly, until release things are going to keep changing. The packets might be similar to the final product or not. Kind of impossible to get a feel for the game until after it's released and some reviews come in.

To an extent, yes, I won't be able to tell the quality of the fifth edition until it does release, but what is and what isn't around at the moment in the materials is a sort of reflection of what to expect.

Other than that, I do kinda wanna run this thing, but all it does come is with preset characters to work with. I might have an old packet of the playtest materials lying around, but I'm hoping that the most recent changes in the latest would be for the better.

And well, ultimately when I get down to it, whether I grab the next edition or not is going to depend on how well I can sell it to my friends, since table top rpgs are a little hard to play solo.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-24, 09:01 PM

The game will come out, and anyone complaining will be told to wait for the new module supplements.
Scenario kind of falls apart right here. If you can't make do with the core rules then you aren't made for the game, if you can't game properly with the core rules then the game isn't made for you.

Still need the game to form an opinion if it going to be workable with your group and playtest packets are almost always far enough different from the completed product that they lose meaning. Playtests are good for the developers, not so much for the players.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-24, 09:16 PM

Still need the game to form an opinion if it going to be workable with your group and playtest packets are almost always far enough different from the completed product that they lose meaning. Playtests are good for the developers, not so much for the players.

I figured they were each different because WotC wanted to test out a bunch of ideas and see how we received them. Which seems to be the whole point of a playtest.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-24, 09:16 PM

Scenario kind of falls apart right here. If you can't make do with the core rules then you aren't made for the game, if you can't game properly with the core rules then the game isn't made for you.
Yes, WotC has a brilliant strategy of alienating people who follow the rules of their games and find out they are poorly made. I foresee "Elite D&D Next" being the most popular game of 2014.

In other words, D&D Next isn't for YOU (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24) :smallbiggrin:

Seerow

2013-12-24, 09:38 PM

Scenario kind of falls apart right here. If you can't make do with the core rules then you aren't made for the game, if you can't game properly with the core rules then the game isn't made for you.

Except the supposed big selling point of DDN is the modularity, and ability to make the game as simple or complex as you want.

So even if you don't like the core rules, and want to complain about it, people will be telling you "Wait for the tactical module!". Then when the "tactical module" gets released and it's a bunch of fiddly crap like facing mechanics and meaningless +1 circumstance modifiers (which is what has been described to us by Mearls himself, but people over on the WotC official forums continue to insist that such a module would be targetted at 4e lovers) that nobody actually wants or cares about. The players who still aren't satisfied then get told "It's okay the mid edition will fix it!" (or as Oracle Hunter describes, DDN: Elite).

Either way the main point of my post was to jokingly point out how at no point during the cycle of an edition are people who are happy with it going to find it acceptable to criticize it. They'll always tell you to keep waiting for some great new thing that will fix all of your problems.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-25, 02:45 AM

I figured they were each different because WotC wanted to test out a bunch of ideas and see how we received them. Which seems to be the whole point of a playtest.
Again my point since asking for the last packet as a measure of the game does little to nothing as a measure for determining how the final product will turn out. You could get all excited about part X while the packet was aimed at determining part Y and that part X was already scrapped for part Z.

Yes, WotC has a brilliant strategy of alienating people who follow the rules of their games and find out they are poorly made. I foresee "Elite D&D Next" being the most popular game of 2014.

In other words, D&D Next isn't for YOU (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24) :smallbiggrin:
There is certainly enough ham.

Except the supposed big selling point of DDN is the modularity, and ability to make the game as simple or complex as you want.

So even if you don't like the core rules, and want to complain about it, people will be telling you "Wait for the tactical module!". Then when the "tactical module" gets released and it's a bunch of fiddly crap like facing mechanics and meaningless +1 circumstance modifiers (which is what has been described to us by Mearls himself, but people over on the WotC official forums continue to insist that such a module would be targetted at 4e lovers) that nobody actually wants or cares about. The players who still aren't satisfied then get told "It's okay the mid edition will fix it!" (or as Oracle Hunter describes, DDN: Elite).

Either way the main point of my post was to jokingly point out how at no point during the cycle of an edition are people who are happy with it going to find it acceptable to criticize it. They'll always tell you to keep waiting for some great new thing that will fix all of your problems.
I just like to point out that Next's playtest packets don't really show any of the system. It's Schrodinger's D&D, existing and not existing at the same time.

At least when there is a completed product it exists and can be judged. Making a determination by packets is like trying to be a judge in a best burger contest by using only grainy old photographs of the cattle that contributed the meat.

SiuiS

2013-12-25, 03:57 AM

I figured they were each different because WotC wanted to test out a bunch of ideas and see how we received them. Which seems to be the whole point of a playtest.

Pretty much. Too bad they didn't tell anyone that. Instead of a heuristic face people assumed the patter of outpouring was the trend of the game, and try vetoed a lot of ideas that were cool but with unsound math. Too bad.

huttj509

2013-12-25, 04:05 AM

Pretty much. Too bad they didn't tell anyone that. Instead of a heuristic face people assumed the patter of outpouring was the trend of the game, and try vetoed a lot of ideas that were cool but with unsound math. Too bad.

Various of their dnd podcasts from back in 2012 made it pretty clear during the developer chatter (such as talking about deliberately removing turn undead for one convention playtest, to see how many people missed it and felt it was an iconic part of the cleric, asking how to turn undead during their games). They definitely dropped the ball in terms of making it clear as part of the playtest and feedback, though.

SiuiS

2013-12-25, 04:17 AM

Unfortunately, developer podcasts aren't part of the playtest material. They weren't advertised with it, they weren't packaged with it. They were bonus content. I didn't even know about them until the thing was near done, because the wizards site is a mess and I never go there.

Morty

2013-12-25, 05:28 AM

So even if you don't like the core rules, and want to complain about it, people will be telling you "Wait for the tactical module!". Then when the "tactical module" gets released and it's a bunch of fiddly crap like facing mechanics and meaningless +1 circumstance modifiers (which is what has been described to us by Mearls himself, but people over on the WotC official forums continue to insist that such a module would be targetted at 4e lovers) that nobody actually wants or cares about. The players who still aren't satisfied then get told "It's okay the mid edition will fix it!" (or as Oracle Hunter describes, DDN: Elite).

Given that the Weaponmaster path for the Fighter seems to be WotC's current idea of a tactically complex non-magical character, +1 circumstance modifiers are indeed probably the best one can hope for.

At least when there is a completed product it exists and can be judged. Making a determination by packets is like trying to be a judge in a best burger contest by using only grainy old photographs of the cattle that contributed the meat.

If they didn't want us to judge the packets, they shouldn't have released them.

Various of their dnd podcasts from back in 2012 made it pretty clear during the developer chatter (such as talking about deliberately removing turn undead for one convention playtest, to see how many people missed it and felt it was an iconic part of the cleric, asking how to turn undead during their games). They definitely dropped the ball in terms of making it clear as part of the playtest and feedback, though.

And it still shows that their priorities are completely backwards by clinging to the word "iconic" as though it actually means anything.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-25, 06:49 AM

If they didn't want us to judge the packets, they shouldn't have released them .
Who says you can't?

Judge the packets all you want. What some people are do, however, is judge the final, unreleased product from a packet which is unlikely to look like the finished product.

This isn't game testing per se, with playtests filling the alpha or beta testing phases. This is marketing to see what polls strongly so they can recapture lost demographic and hopefully pull in new gamers.

Kurald Galain

2013-12-25, 07:18 AM

This isn't game testing per se, with playtests filling the alpha or beta testing phases. This is marketing to see what polls strongly so they can recapture lost demographic and hopefully pull in new gamers.

That's a possibility. However, another possibility is that this is "game testing per se" only WOTC isn't very good at it, and that the latest playtest packets are almost identical to the final product.

So that depends mostly on whether you trust WOTC, but frankly they don't have a particularly good track record in this area.

Morty

2013-12-25, 07:40 AM

SassyQuatch

2013-12-25, 08:57 AM

That's a possibility. However, another possibility is that this is "game testing per se" only WOTC isn't very good at it, and that the latest playtest packets are almost identical to the final product.

So that depends mostly on whether you trust WOTC, but frankly they don't have a particularly good track record in this area.
Oh, I don't trust them to do anything other than screw up further. But considering how little real data that has come out, the game is guaranteed to be different if for no other reason than expanded options. Unless they decide to release a 30ish page core ruleset I think that at least that should be assured.

People are fully within their rights, when looking at shoddy playtest materials, not to have a lot of hope for their final product. Why, exactly, should I believe they'll do better later?
What's so hard to understand? I have repeatedly said that people are allowed to make judgments on the packets. It is just ridiculous for them to assume that early stage tedting is enough information to judge the completed ruleset. Hence why I have said that we won't really know anything until release and player reviews come in.

You judge books by their placeholder cover art as well?

Blackdrop

2013-12-25, 09:10 AM

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-25, 09:11 AM

You judge books by their placeholder cover art as well?
So, while I shouldn't belabor the point, I will.

Placeholder Cover Art has nothing to do with the design process. It's usually some slapdash work by the artist (or straight-up clipart) to literally say "hey, there's going to be a picture here that might look like this."

You don't design games that way. There's no such thing as a "placeholder engine" in a prototype car either -- either there's something running in there or there ain't. Drop another engine in that car and you won't know how the car runs when released because you won't be using that essential component.

Now, while it's fun to think that the truly awful playtest rules were just an elaborate form of push-polling, I doubt it for two reasons. The first is that Mearls was obviously trying to refine some sort of system out of the "3.X Engine" he dropped out in the first playtest. The second is that you learn absolutely nothing about how the final game should look by throwing isolated mechanics at players and say "how do you like that?" There are literally no useful data to be gained.

If the released rules bear absolutely no resemblance to the Final Packet I will have to assume that Hasbro shoved Mearls in a closet around May 2014 and
pulled out some other designer's mechanics to doll up for GenCon. Either that, or WotC is so incompetent at marketing that they thought bandying around something their designers came up with at 3am that morning as a "playtest" of their vaunted new system for two years would make people excited for a completely unrelated game that would come out later.

And if that's true, this is the last edition of D&D that Hasbro is selling for a long time.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-25, 09:46 AM

Except, they're not judging the book by the cover art, they're judging it by the rough draft. And the thing is, while the details between the rough draft and the final copy change, the plot and general outline of the story tends to stay the same.

And this isn't "early stage testing", we're over a year-and-half into the "open playtest", and the fact that they seem to no longer be accepting people into it, sends the signal that certain details are probably locked in, and release is probably going to be sooner rather then later.
1: Haven't read many early scripts, have you? Do so. Your mind will be blown.
2. Well, gee. I guess since everybody is arguing for the sake of arguing we'll all just have to gulp down that Haterade and go out of our way to not actually look at the completed product. Rrarrg! :smallfurious:

So, while I shouldn't belabor the point, I will.

Placeholder Cover Art has nothing to do with the design process. It's usually some slapdash work by the artist (or straight-up clipart) to literally say "hey, there's going to be a picture here that might look like this."

You don't design games that way. There's no such thing as a "placeholder engine" in a prototype car either -- either there's something running in there or there ain't. Drop another engine in that car and you won't know how the car runs when released -because you won't be using that essential component.

Now, while it's fun to think that the truly awful playtest rules were just an elaborate form of push-polling, I doubt it for two reasons. The first is that Mearls was obviously trying to refine some sort of system out of the "3.X Engine" he dropped out in the first playtest. The second is that you learn absolutely nothing about how the final game should look by throwing isolated mechanics at players and say "how do you like that?" There are literally no useful data to be gained.

If the released rules bear absolutely no resemblance to the Final Packet I will have to assume that Hasbro shoved Mearls in a closet around May 2014 and
pulled out some other designer's mechanics to doll up for GenCon. Either that, or WotC is so incompetent at marketing that they thought bandying around something their designers came up with at 3am that morning as a "playtest" of their vaunted new system for two years would make people excited for a completely unrelated game that would come out later.

And if that's true, this is the last edition of D&D that Hasbro is selling for a long time.
Again numbered because phones hate forums.
1. Auto manufacturers do that all the time, actually. They are called mules. Because you don't need a completed car to test out the car's component pieces. Many new vehicles are completed and tested before their proposed engine is fully developed. Then they get some more testing to ensure that the components mesh as planned and the car ships without having to retest everything again for years before mass production begins.
2. Who said completely unrelated? Designers absolutely put together seemingly random pieces in order to not give everything away and to test how they work in isolation and not depending upon other non-tested pieces that might fail in a catastrophic manner. Like the automotive industry does constantly (you really chose a bad illustration, sorry).
3. I meant to say Rrarrg! Prejudge good, make informed decision on compiled facts bad! :smallfurious:

SiuiS

2013-12-25, 09:58 AM

Who says you can't?

Judge the packets all you want. What some people are do, however, is judge the final, unreleased product from a packet which is unlikely to look like the finished product.

This isn't game testing per se, with playtests filling the alpha or beta testing phases. This is marketing to see what polls strongly so they can recapture lost demographic and hopefully pull in new gamers.

Possibly. It's also possible that WotC instead used that as their cover up to buy more time. The point is, WotC screwed up something publicly, even if what that thing is remains in flux.

People are fully within their rights, when looking at shoddy playtest materials, not to have a lot of hope for their final product. Why, exactly, should I believe they'll do better later?

You should make a judgement based on factual data and not a visceral reaction to how that data is presented. If the playtest packets were indeed drafts of the rules, go ahead. If they were instead however complex, interactive and hopefully engaging polling methods asking you what the draft should be about and focus on, then no you're being a pessimist jerk.

We don't know which it is yet. WotC said they were seeing what kind of movie we want, and how we respond to pieces of a movie in a vacuum. Except they packaged those pieces in entire, craptastic movies and threw up their hands when we as an audience critiqued the entire crap movie instead of discussing the merits of a scene or set-up and how it can fit in a good movie.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-25, 10:08 AM

And it still shows that their priorities are completely backwards by clinging to the word "iconic" as though it actually means anything.

I think by "iconic cleric" they mean "meets players expectations of what a cleric should do and feel like". Either way, I think that testing Cleric without Turn Undead is/was part of an attempt to determine whether that class feature was integral to the concept.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-25, 10:11 AM

Possibly. It's also possible that WotC instead used that as their cover up to buy more time. The point is, WotC screwed up something publicly, even if what that thing is remains in flux.

They certainly have the screwing up part worked out. I'm fairly certain that there is some panicking going on right now, because they have shifted things around a lot in these playtests, and the reaction seems to be as bad as or worse than when they started.

Scow2

2013-12-25, 12:16 PM

And it still shows that their priorities are completely backwards by clinging to the word "iconic" as though it actually means anything.Given how badly WoTC got burned for breaking from tradition with 4e (Sure, they made money: But that Pathfinder, despite being nothing more than 3.Same, is outselling them told them that they screwed up badly by killing the 'sacred cows")

Iconic DOES mean something - There are things that make D&D, well, D&D. They lost that with 4e (By building on the 3e metagame), and are trying to re-find that. Not only must D&D 5e be good, it must also be D&D

huttj509

2013-12-25, 01:08 PM

I think by "iconic cleric" they mean "meets players expectations of what a cleric should do and feel like". Either way, I think that testing Cleric without Turn Undead is/was part of an attempt to determine whether that class feature was integral to the concept.

Exactly. The use of "iconic" in that comment I was referring to was mine, not theirs. It was very much "People expected to see Turn Undead in a DnD Cleric, it felt missing when it wasn't there, checking that was why we removed it for that playtest."

This was also before (or possibly concurrent with) the public playtest packages, when they were still doing "secret" builds for various conventions, that weren't getting public releases.

I really wish I could remember which podcast it was, so I could link it...I'm not inclined to listen through my whole downloaded collection to find it.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-12-26, 04:55 AM

I'm so glad my wife and I aren't desperately attached to the hip and yet are best friends. None of this silly "omg I'm lonely text meeeee" crap. There is something wrong if you can't go a few hours without talking to your significant other, maybe they need a hobby too?

If you're an introvert dating an extrovert, god help you.

SiuiS

2013-12-26, 06:26 AM

If you're an introvert dating an extrovert, god help you.

Thanks. It's hard, but ultimately worth it! But sometimes I just want to slam an iron wall down, tell the world to flick off, and spend an hour drinking a slow cup of coffee because the ritual brings me around to a brain space where other people are worth having around. Which is murder when a quick trip to pick something up and me going along for company becomes hours long trips to multiple stores and multiple errands, the bank, groceries, dropping something off at her mom's house, and goodness why are you so grumpy? I told you we would get you coffee later.

>_<

*

Thought-stuff, tangentially related. Remember discussion of base casting system as "infinite cantrips, with limited (daily/encounter) ability to boost those cantrips to higher usefulness"? I have a weird question.

Doesn't that basically explain incarnum?

You spend an hour and then shape your soulmelds (choose your spells). They have base effects (infinite cantrips), but you can boost them within level-restricted limits by adding essential to any one soulmeld (can boost the effectiveness of any one spell by focusing your resources on it).

Would this be a viable avenue of interesting home brew? I'm captivated by the thought.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-26, 07:47 AM

Given how badly WoTC got burned for breaking from tradition with 4e (Sure, they made money: But that Pathfinder, despite being nothing more than 3.Same, is outselling them told them that they screwed up badly by killing the 'sacred cows")

Iconic DOES mean something - There are things that make D&D, well, D&D. They lost that with 4e (By building on the 3e metagame), and are trying to re-find that. Not only must D&D 5e be good, it must also be D&D
Problem is that 4e still kept many of the "iconic" abilities, but failed to make them special.

Wizards got "spell" powers, the Cleric could "turn" with Channel Divinity, Fighters could "fight". In the end though one of the biggest flaws was the 4e formula, where everybody progressed at the same rate (level X daily, level Y utility) and made unique abilities seem mundane (I can do X[W] damage with my melee weapon and push him back, or my buddy can "repel" him away and do X[W] damage, but they are totally different because the description is different).

What needs to be done is making the classes unique by being suitably different and not sticking to a philosophy of "we put the +2 in a different area, so its waaay different than the other classes". Especially with "iconic" abilities.

Kurald Galain

2013-12-26, 07:57 AM

Problem is that 4e still kept many of the "iconic" abilities, but failed to make them special.

Yes. One of the lessons to be learned from 4E is that if take the name of an iconic ability and stick that on an ability that does something completely different, then fans are not going to like it.

For instance, if you give wizards a spell called Finger Of Death, then people expect it to kill stuff, not to deal approximately the same damage as every other spell at that level.

In terms of 5E, this means the game shouln't use the name Hit Dice for a mechanic that's unrelated to earlier-edition hit dice.

Perseus

2013-12-27, 10:26 AM

Yes. One of the lessons to be learned from 4E is that if take the name of an iconic ability and stick that on an ability that does something completely different, then fans are not going to like it.

For instance, if you give wizards a spell called Finger Of Death, then people expect it to kill stuff, not to deal approximately the same damage as every other spell at that level.

In terms of 5E, this means the game shouln't use the name Hit Dice for a mechanic that's unrelated to earlier-edition hit dice.

Well the problem is that if you don't change iconic abilities to fit the new game style then you can't have the iconic abilities or you break your goals of a new game.

It is a fine line to walk.

But it comes down to what people are willing to accept and what people aren't, sadly many people were against 4e long before they got to read the iconic abilities (though not all).

Reminds me of when FF8 came out, many friends I knew had different problems with it because it was a drastic change from FF7 even if some of the most iconic elements were still there.

Hmmm I wonder if that makes D&D Next the FF9 of the group...

If 4e did one thing right (I actually think it did a lot right and some wrong) it was how they changed the Cleric. Turn undead included. I hoped they would continue the model into 5e so that we dont go back to heal bots.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-27, 10:40 AM

Reminds me of when FF8 came out, many friends I knew had different problems with it because it was a drastic change from FF7 even if some of the most iconic elements were still there.
Did... did your friends ever play any other Final Fantasy game? Because each and every one of them play very differently from the others. It's kind of the point of the series.

Now, if their complaints about FF8 were that the mechanics were terrible and counterproductive well... :smallamused:

@Kurald_Galain: IMHO, "Evolve or Die" is as true in RPG development as in everything else :smallbiggrin:

Perseus

2013-12-27, 10:52 AM

Did... did your friends ever play any other Final Fantasy game? Because each and every one of them play very differently from the others. It's kind of the point of the series.

Now, if their complaints about FF8 were that the mechanics were terrible and counterproductive well... :smallamused:

@Kurald_Galain: IMHO, "Evolve or Die" is as true in RPG development as in everything else :smallbiggrin:

Some, like me, did play the older games. Others however didn't play them till the advance versions came out. Some of them were like "omg I can't equip anything other than a weapon wtf I'm not playing this" while others had other complaints. Of course years later when some tried it and loved it I got to give them a very very hard time for it. I've already got to do this to a couple Ex 4e nay sayers... >:D (but hey what kind of friend would I be if I didn't give them a hard time, and them me haha)

Evolve or die is a great way to express all of this. However sometimes people see evolution and throw the idea out the window then shutting their eyes, putting their fingers in their ears, and saying lalalalalalala.

Morty

2013-12-27, 10:55 AM

Perseus

2013-12-27, 11:12 AM

The problem here is that making "iconic" a higher priority than "making any damn sense at all" is a bad way to make a game.

That... Could be a fun way to make a game.

I mean, it would need to be a silly game and not d&d but it would be fun to make.

Take all of the most iconic things in fantasy and put them into a game, even if it is such a weird thing that it makes no sense.

Like being able to completely block a dragon's fire breath (with no injury to you) with your shield instead of dodging out of the way. Damn to bad they scrapped parry...

Ghost Nappa

2013-12-27, 11:15 AM

That... Could be a fun way to make a game.

I mean, it would need to be a silly game and not d&d but it would be fun to make.

Take all of the most iconic things in fantasy and put them into a game, even if it is such a weird thing that it makes no sense.

Like being able to completely block a dragon's fire breath (with no injury to you) with your shield instead of dodging out of the way. Damn to bad they scrapped parry...

Why use your shield? Just whack the fireball with your sword and reflect it back at the dragon! Always works against Ganondorf.

Is the September Playtest still the latest released rule-set that is supposed to be tested?

Morty

2013-12-27, 11:15 AM

Blocking a dragon's breath with your shield sounds like a perfectly fine ability for a high-level warrior to have, actually.

Scow2

2013-12-27, 11:19 AM

Like being able to completely block a dragon's fire breath (with no injury to you) with your shield instead of dodging out of the way. Damn to bad they scrapped parry...Well, 4e got this right, and 3e had SOME people want to get this right by adding Shield Bonuses to Reflex Saves (But 3.X was designed by idiots who couldn't figure shields out). There's nothing "Silly" about taking cover behind a shield from a dragon's breath.

Evolve or die is a great way to express all of this. However sometimes people see evolution and throw the idea out the window then shutting their eyes, putting their fingers in their ears, and saying lalalalalalala.Evolution is trial-and-error. We like to reject the 'error'.

Kurald Galain

2013-12-27, 11:44 AM

Take all of the most iconic things in fantasy and put them into a game, even if it is such a weird thing that it makes no sense.

This game already exists, and it's called Munchkin :smallbiggrin:

Perseus

2013-12-27, 11:53 AM

Blocking a dragon's breath with your shield sounds like a perfectly fine ability for a high-level warrior to have, actually.

Why high level? That makes no sense.

A level 1 mage can bend reality and tell physics to shut up and sit down but the first level warriors (who put in the time) can't put a shield between themselves and a jet stream of firery dragons breath?

Edit: yeah munchkin is a great example of iconic sillyness. I'm a big fan of that work.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-27, 12:04 PM

The problem here is that making "iconic" a higher priority than "making any damn sense at all" is a bad way to make a game.

Any product has to conform to the customer's expectations. We (the customers) are always right, after all :smallbiggrin:

Perseus

2013-12-27, 12:18 PM

Any product has to conform to the customer's expectations. We (the customers) are always right, after all :smallbiggrin:

Serious or not, I miss the days where that was true. Now it is more of "the customer is always right but all our competitors arent giving them options so who cares?"

WotC's main competitor is Paizo for the D&D market. Paizo isn't giving options of non -3.5 games... So if WotC doesn't either it will end up as "the customer can shut it and buy what we sell".

Ive always thought that paizo is actually working with WotC and not against them... You know to keep other companies from cashing in on the D&D market. I mean Paizo worked with them for years so I'm sure they have connections... Sort of how Microsoft and Apple aren't a monopoly but for a majority of people you only get to choose Microsoft or Apple . if both Microsoft and Apple says the customer is wrong... Then you are wrong. They may not be actively working together but two companies fighting in the same market is a hell of a lot better than 3 or more companies sharing large slices of that pie.

Yay for conspiracies! :p

HMS Invincible

2013-12-27, 12:39 PM

D&D, including all the variants, paizo, white wolf, and all the other role playing games out there is a laughably small market. We pay $30 per book because we're paying the premium of a niche market. Just think of the juggarnaut that EA brings to modern FPS with endless warfare clones. Now compare it to all the RPG paper and dice games out there. We lose handily.

Slipperychicken

2013-12-27, 02:15 PM

We lose handily.

It's more correct to say that everyone wins. We get the RPGs we want, and FPS markets get the games they want too.

Ghost Nappa

2013-12-27, 03:15 PM

Aside: So I remembered this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16153403&postcount=28), checked the Bestiary I have from the 2013-09-19 Playtest, and used CTRL+F.

There are no instances of the words "baby," "child," "kid," "infant," or "hatchling." There is exactly ONE instance of the word "young" but is in the explanation of an ability and not a descriptor of an enemy. (it's under the Mimicry ability for the Hag).

So, you know. Progress. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0678.html)

Pex

2013-12-27, 03:54 PM

Why high level? That makes no sense.

A level 1 mage can bend reality and tell physics to shut up and sit down but the first level warriors (who put in the time) can't put a shield between themselves and a jet stream of firery dragons breath?

Edit: yeah munchkin is a great example of iconic sillyness. I'm a big fan of that work.

In 3E rogues and monks get evasion at level 2, so yeah, the ability is fine at low level. It should be intrinsic to the Fighter class rather than proficiency in shield. It gives the Fighter a reason to use weapon & shield style instead of two-handed weapon. Maybe Barbarian and Paladin can have it too, if at a later level. 3E Rangers get Evasion at a higher level after all.

Scow2

2013-12-27, 06:01 PM

In 3.5, I'd just have Shields count as "Cover" (Stacks with other cover bonuses), and Fighting Defensively would improve a non-tower shield to 3.5's "Greater Cover", and thus grant Evasion. Taking Total Defense would give Improved Evasion using a shield you're proficient with.

Not all fighters need Evasion - just Sword+Board fighters (Shield Ward is an awesome feat. A shame Pathfinder decided to make it a capstone instead of early-level ability)

Also, on the subject of iconic abilities not fitting into the game: If you can't fit an iconic ability into the game to function as it's supposed to on a conceptual level, it's an indication there's a problem with the game itself.

SiuiS

2013-12-27, 07:05 PM

Blocking a dragon's breath with your shield sounds like a perfectly fine ability for a high-level warrior to have, actually.

You can do that from 1st, with a tower shield. Ready an action to drop it when the dragon goes. If the shield survives you're golden.

Ashdate

2013-12-27, 09:59 PM

You can do that from 1st, with a tower shield. Ready an action to drop it when the dragon goes. If the shield survives you're golden.

4e sort-of built this in too by giving a Reflex defense bonus to characters who were using a shield.

They couldn't adapt that because of the way they do saving throws in Next, but giving advantage on reflex checks to particular classes when using a shield would be a swanky alternative. I don't think they would that though because Wizards seem to be afraid of using advantage/disadvantage for whatever reason.

Scow2

2013-12-27, 10:10 PM

They don't want to oversaturate advantage/disadvantage.

Adding the shields AC bonus to Dexterity and Strength saves would work.

Ashdate

2013-12-27, 10:48 PM

They don't want to oversaturate advantage/disadvantage.

Advantage/disadvantage is pretty much the only cool new thing in the new edition. They should be showing it off!

(and fixing the advantage/disadvantage stacking rules.)

Scow2

2013-12-27, 10:49 PM

Advantage/disadvantage is pretty much the only cool new thing in the new edition. They should be showing it off!

(and fixing the advantage/disadvantage stacking rules.)

They do, in plenty of other places. Hard-coded always-on advantage should be avoided.

andresrhoodie

2013-12-27, 11:25 PM

If you're an introvert dating an extrovert, god help you.

Exactly. We both talk for a living and have for years. we text all day at work too.

Anyway 5th edition, at this point its what? 3.2 ed? Slightly more detailed then 2e but with none of the customization of 3e?

Scow2

2013-12-27, 11:27 PM

It has plenty of customization... even more than 3e if you realize it cut off the chaff and baked-in real options. Not as many options as the entire 3.P line, but more options than 3.Core.

andresrhoodie

2013-12-27, 11:43 PM

It has plenty of customization... even more than 3e if you realize it cut off the chaff and baked-in real options. Not as many options as the entire 3.P line, but more options than 3.Core.

I dont consider choosing a background that gives you fewer skills and individuality then multiclassing at 2nd level did in 3e to be "plenty of customization".

Its more like "hey, you have some choices, eat a **** and quit whining about bland sameness".

Especially considering that 1st level is supposed to be "pre-real-adventurers".

Unless they changed that.

Scow2

2013-12-28, 01:27 AM

Kurald Galain

2013-12-28, 01:59 AM

Anyway 5th edition, at this point its what? 3.2 ed? Slightly more detailed then 2e but with none of the customization of 3e?

Basically yes. 5E as we've seen so far has much less customization or options than 3E core, and even less than 4E core too. As said above, basically the only interesting thing in 5E is the advantage mechanic, and WOTC could have done a better job developing that one too.

Lord Raziere

2013-12-28, 03:01 AM

Scow2

2013-12-28, 03:19 AM

wow, I said before that WotC is now shooting itself in the face...

but I didn't realize that their gun was an assault rifle they had their trigger pressed own upon continually.

how bad you think 5th edition will be at this point?Significantly better than 3rd edition. Then again, that's not hard to do.

D&D Next is only "short on options" if you consider "You may select seven feats over twenty levels, but six of them are locked into specific choices you need to remain viable" or "You must spend 5 of your 3 available skill points on these precise uses to be competent at one thing, and keep them maxed out if you want them to remain viable - and you also need skills X, Y, and Z to not be a dead load on your party" as "meaningful customization".

D&D Next doesn't have as many "Character building points" to go around because they're assumed to be part of the character's attribute, chosen profession, and rigors of adventuring - not stuff you need to waste 'points' on. The gameplay is during the session, not filling out the character sheet.

In terms of abilities (Not math on the d20, damage output, or HP), a level 4 Fighter in D&D Next has far more ability than a level 8 fighter in D&D 3.5, but not as much as a Level 1 Fighter in D&D 4e (Which is on par with a level 16 fighter in 3.5).

andresrhoodie

2013-12-28, 03:29 AM

Kurald Galain

2013-12-28, 03:30 AM

how bad you think 5th edition will be at this point?

Well, it's not "bad" the way FATAL is bad. It's just so overwhelmingly mediocre. It's boring and doesn't bring anything new to the table. If this didn't have the D&D logo on the cover then nobody would spare it a second glance.

andresrhoodie

2013-12-28, 03:36 AM

wow, I said before that WotC is now shooting itself in the face...

but I didn't realize that their gun was an assault rifle they had their trigger pressed own upon continually.

how bad you think 5th edition will be at this point?

I expect 5e to be the only edition to date that not even remotely worth buying.

I started in 2e ad&d and have found good things to yoink out of every older edition even if i didnt want to play them whole cloth.

5e is the only one yet that the only ideas i halfway liked were early in the playtest and have been kicked out since then.

If the latest playtest is any indication i see no reason at all to give WoTC a dime of my money for it.

Lord Raziere

2013-12-28, 03:40 AM

Well, it's not "bad" the way FATAL is bad. It's just so overwhelmingly mediocre. It's boring and doesn't bring anything new to the table. If this didn't have the D&D logo on the cover then nobody would spare it a second glance.

boring is its own form of bad. if its so bad that it catches ones attention, makes you wonder how this could ever come to be and inspires people to obsess over how jaw-droppingly horrible it is, then at least you get a bunch of entertaining lets read of it, something to make fun of and an example of how not to do things so that others can do things right.

if its boring and not notable, then you get nothing and its just a waste. bad but significantly bad is better than insignificant boring badness. because if something is boring, its not significant to people, and just a void that accomplishes nothing. at least FATAL serves as a warning for what we should not do.

Balor01

2013-12-28, 07:43 AM

Hey guys,

Can you tell me did WoTC publish any playtest modules for higher level PCs? Like lvl 6 +?

Or if there exists any such published material to buy?

thanks

Scow2

2013-12-28, 10:16 AM

I play modern 3.5 or..... pathfinder. Thats all fixed. So you dont have an argument.

And no 5e has just as many "no you cants" as any edition before it. Their just hidden in ludicrous math like dragons being stymied by every locked door on earth.

The editions cusitomization is like deciding on pizza hut versus dominoes.

Its all low quality, over priced, generic crap.But if you try hard enough and want it bad enough.... maybe you can convince yourself theres a difference.Dragons aren't stymied by any door aside from an iron vault door, which it can still burn through. Any lesser door might delay it by 6 seconds.

Pathfinder didn't fix anything about 3.5 - the action economy is worse than ever, classes still get meaningless "+1" to situational rolls instead of actual class features, AC remains a joke, CMD ensures that trying to get good at something means you can maybe be mediocre at it. Most out-of-the-ordinary actions are "Provoke an attack of opportunity, and if you take damage, fail" (In a system balanced around the idea that after 6th level, the first hit and thus all AoOs are guaranteed), the follow-up attacks intended to allow fighter damage to scale won't hit anything with a competitive AC, move+attack is broken, and skills are still either taxes or worthless, with horrible scaling.

Hey guys,

Can you tell me did WoTC publish any playtest modules for higher level PCs? Like lvl 6 +?

Or if there exists any such published material to buy?

thanksThere's one for level 12+ adventurers... Curse of the something king, I'm AFB right now.

Seerow

2013-12-28, 10:59 AM

You didn't really get any new skills multiclassing at level 2 - you either have to lose out on what you already had if you multiclass to something that gets fewer skill points/level than your first class, or your horrifically behind the Skill DC curve if you multiclass into one that has more points/level. And the x4 at first level meant any attempt to branch out into new skills after first would be extremely costly.

As opposed to DDN where you multiclass and don't even have the option of picking up a few ranks in a new skill. And when you level up you never actually get better at a skill.

A 1st level 3.5 character has the same or better skill bonuses as a 20th level DDN character. The fact that skill DCs in 3.5 get higher doesn't matter, they get higher letting you do more impressive things. DDN starts you low, ends low, and you never actually get to do anything outside the reach of a first level character, because if you did bounded accuracy as a model falls apart.

In D&D Next, you get at least 4 skills, ALWAYs at the proficiency expected/level, with 3 from background, at least 1 from class - and if your background and class overlap, you can get any skill you feel like having, no questions or limitations.

And by 3rd level even a Fighter with no int bonus will have more skills at a higher bonus than the DDN character. This is not a point in your favor.

Your starting attribute spread at level 1 matters in D&D Next, and because of the more constrained math, the bonuses are more meaningful (Not as meaningful as I'd like, though).

The bonuses aren't actually any more meaningful. That's the problem. Constrained bonuses don't make an individual bonus more meaningful, it just makes the overall constrained. A character going from +0 to +5 is effectively the same as a character going from +20 to +25. The only difference is if you're going from +20 to +25, there's also a range of +0 to +19 that other characters can occupy, giving a broader range of capability overall.

While not enumerated, the game also advises to take outstanding attribute values into consideration when considering what tasks are 'trivial' for a character.

In other words "DM Fiat what you think is appropriate for the character, we can't be bothered to design actual rules". This is again, not a strength of the system.

Caster classes, being SAD and getting new spell options every other level don't get as many attribute boosts/feats as mundane classes do - or, conversely, noncaster classes get more attribute boosts and feats to gain more options, offsetting the lack of options given by casting (But are always available all the time). Feats are also more meaningful.

The feats were all pretty lame last time I checked. They were pretty much middle of the road when compared to the impact of 3.5 feats. Better than the worst options, but worse than the best options.

And seriously, attributes and lined up next to new spells is a joke. That sort of design is what gave us the awful 3.5 fighter, and they're doubling down on it again.

Ultimately, 5e has a lot fewer "No, you can't do this' spots than 3e, with the big differences between characters not on the character sheet, but in how they're played.

And if none of those things are represented in mechanics, you may as well just sit down and say "I'm playing the strong guy" and play magic tea party instead.

D&D Next is only "short on options" if you consider "You may select seven feats over twenty levels, but six of them are locked into specific choices you need to remain viable" or "You must spend 5 of your 3 available skill points on these precise uses to be competent at one thing, and keep them maxed out if you want them to remain viable - and you also need skills X, Y, and Z to not be a dead load on your party" as "meaningful customization".

Tell me what 5 feats every character in 3.5 takes. I'm really curious here because I've made dozens of characters and can't think of more than a handful I've repeated.

Your skill complaint really doesn't even make sort of sense. What character gets only 3 skill points and is expected to have 8 skills maxed out to be viable? Mundane classes in 3.5 could use some extra skill points across the board and/or the skill list could use some condensation... but the DDN skill system is in every possible way worse; because with the DDN system you could literally take skill away completely and would most likely never even notice the difference.

D&D Next doesn't have as many "Character building points" to go around because they're assumed to be part of the character's attribute, chosen profession, and rigors of adventuring - not stuff you need to waste 'points' on. The gameplay is during the session, not filling out the character sheet.

And attributes are so restricted that you don't get a meaningful degree of difference among them. Your attribute literally ranges from +0 to +5. That would be fine if it was a minor part of your character. But as something that is supposed to be the single most defining aspect of your character, there needs to be some meat backing up the guy with 20 strength actually being better. Otherwise you end up with **** like the Fighter trying to bash down a door, failing, then the Wizard walking up and succeeding first try, because he rolled better. The actual attributes, training, and skill, mean nothing next to the roll of the dice. That is not acceptable in any way.

In terms of abilities (Not math on the d20, damage output, or HP), a level 4 Fighter in D&D Next has far more ability than a level 8 fighter in D&D 3.5, but not as much as a Level 1 Fighter in D&D 4e (Which is on par with a level 16 fighter in 3.5).

What on earth are you defining as abilities here that a level 1 fighter in 4e is equivalent to a 16th level fighter in 3.5? Skill points? Combat options? Feats? Attribute levels (even ignoring the math and just referring to what you can con your DM into believing your 25 strength should be able to do at the table)? On any of those scales, how does the DDN fighter register at all?

And why is the Fighter your baseline comparison point for this anyway. It's frequently highlighted as the big thing that 3.5 really needs to be reworked out of 3.5 and needs the most love. The Fighter is a somewhat interesting comparison point mainly because despite how bad the 3.5 Fighter was, it still is better than DDN. Make the comparison to any character that actually got class features and it becomes laughable.

Really, I don't care if you say you prefer DDN because it strips everything down and you prefer hinging everything on fast talking your DM and rolling high on a D20. But saying that DDN characters are more flexible with more 'real options' available than a 3.5 character is so laughably and provably wrong that it is indefensible.

SiuiS

2013-12-28, 11:25 AM

Seerow

2013-12-28, 11:29 AM

Ladies, please! Both of your systems are pretty.

You guys do realize that pointing out that something else is more flawed, so there! Doesn't actually say anything about the merits of the thing you are defending.

Third edition and Paizo houserules game might be fine at what they do. They aren't all that fine at what Next does, however, which makes singing their praises rather pointless? "Why can't chess be more like parcheesi?" They cry. "That game is much better suited to what I want out of a board game!"

The only thing Next does well is encouraging BSing your DM into not making you roll to do something you should be good at. If you roll, you've already lost because now the best character in the game at something is only marginally better than the worst.

I see no reason to have a printed game that has that as its only strength. As the successor to D&D it is an insult.

3.5 had its strengths and flaws. 4e had its strengths and flaws. Both have their areas that need improving upon, and things worth noting and preserving. By comparison, 5e is a steaming pile of blandness with no actual redeeming strengths. Anything you can do well in 5e you could do just as well rolling a D20 and asking the DM if you succeeded, with no character sheets or systems behind it at all.

SiuiS

2013-12-28, 11:33 AM

The only thing Next does well is encouraging BSing your DM into not making you roll to do something you should be good at. If you roll, you've already lost because now the best character in the game at something is only marginally better than the worst.

I see no reason to have a printed game that has that as its only strength. As the successor to D&D it is an insult.

3.5 had its strengths and flaws. 4e had its strengths and flaws. Both have their areas that need improving upon, and things worth noting and preserving. By comparison, 5e is a steaming pile of blandness with no actual redeeming strengths. Anything you can do well in 5e you could do just as well rolling a D20 and asking the DM if you succeeded, with no character sheets or systems behind it at all.

How do you know? You've seen a select few pieces of generic rules designed to preclude the possibility of reverse engineering. You're bitching at a schematic because of the shades of blue they chose for paper and ink.

Seerow

2013-12-28, 11:40 AM

How do you know? You've seen a select few pieces of generic rules designed to preclude the possibility of reverse engineering. You're bitching at a schematic because of the shades of blue they chose for paper and ink.

See previous post a couple pages back about how something will never be done enough for people who like it to accept negative criticism.

We saw well over a year worth of playtest packets, every one of them had a similar underlying design direction, each packet moved the packet closer towards what I described. We don't have the final product, but we certainly have a lot of information of the sort of game that is being designed. Unless this whole thing was a bait and switch and they release something that is 100% opposite of what they provided in their playtests, what I said is correct.

SiuiS

2013-12-28, 11:43 AM

Seerow

2013-12-28, 11:51 AM

The problem is you're not even having the same discussion or using the same guidelines. You ask, why bring up the fighter when the fighter is the borkedest 3.5 thing? But that's the answer. The fighter is a good comparison point specifically because the fighter is something that should be done well, and comparing how one does it well and the other doesn't makes sense. You wonder why he would care, and that just illustrates that you're judging by totally different criteria. You're saying that this house is a terrible truck, so it must have no value. But it has value... As a house.

No, the point is that 3.5 is the worst the Fighter has to offer. Comparing Fighters across editions is a very weak point.

But even when using that comparison point, it takes some very biased accounting to put the DDN Fighter we have seen above the 3.5 Fighter in capability.

You're judging the game based on how good a 3.5 game it is, and decrying it as having no merit because it can't 3.5 well enough. That's exactly the kind of critique that got us this watered down third edition BS in the first place, though.

If DDN had its own strengths, it wouldn't be compared to 3.5. The problem is, it tried to take a step back from 4e, returning to a more 3e-esque game. Bringing back different resource progressions, different character features, etc. But it does all of these things in a way that is strictly worse than 3e. It also cuts back the scaling of character capability in a way that makes AD&D look like a superhero game by comparison.

I don't just trash on everything new, or because it's not 3e. I actually liked 4e, despite not doing better than 3e, because 4e had its own strengths and identity. The problem with DDN is the design is to be just like 3e, but without any of the things that made 3e interesting or good.

You even admit that what we've seen is "watered down 3rd edition BS", so why are you arguing the point? It didn't become a watered down 3rd edition because of people complaining. It became that because that is what the designers worked towards progressively over an extended period of time. In the early packets, there was some hope that DDN would evolve in its own direction and could be an interesting and unique system in its own right. At this stage in development, that hope is gone.

SiuiS

2013-12-28, 12:45 PM

No, the point is that 3.5 is the worst the Fighter has to offer. Comparing Fighters across editions is a very weak point.

Comparing editions is a very weak point, just sort of in general.

But even when using that comparison point, it takes some very biased accounting to put the DDN Fighter we have seen above the 3.5 Fighter in capability.

Oh? How so? The only person I've seen using examples in a clear fashion has been Scow2, everyone else is just sort of shouting hyperbole or changing criteria.

How does the DDN fighter fare less well against the system of Next than the d20 fighter fares against the three-point-five engine? And Paizo houserules game doesn't really count, since it's not D&D anymore than making a fighter in Vampire: the Dark Ages is.

If DDN had its own strengths, it wouldn't be compared to 3.5.

This s ridiculously wrong, and you know it. Comparisons happen just because two things exist. 4e has strengths, after all. You yourself admitted it. It was still compared to third edition.

No, what is happening is that the strengths of next don't fall in line with what you want for a system - seemingly because they do a bad job of being an equal or better 3.5 - and so you say it's strengths don't matter, it's just crap.

The problem is, it tried to take a step back from 4e, returning to a more 3e-esque game. Bringing back different resource progressions, different character features, etc. But it does all of these things in a way that is strictly worse than 3e.

Your age is showing. These things all came from waaaay before 3e. Superficial resemblance to 3e (because of 3e's cribbing from other sources, like A&D, etc.) means nothing more than they want recognizability.

It also cuts back the scaling of character capability in a way that makes AD&D look like a superhero game by comparison.

And this isn't a flaw, it's a shift. It's only a flaw if "superhero game", whatever that subjective personal judgement means, should be an industry standard for a fantasy game that has been repeatedly broken beyond repair specifically because of how easy access to superhero power is.

I say, it's not. There's room in the market for a game that appeals to the same sensibilities that lead to e6.

I don't just trash on everything new, or because it's not 3e. I actually liked 4e, despite not doing better than 3e, because 4e had its own strengths and identity. The problem with DDN is the design is to be just like 3e, but without any of the things that made 3e interesting or good.

The design has gotten successively more like 3e in the playtest packets because that is what people were asking for and complaining about a lack of, yes.

You even admit that what we've seen is "watered down 3rd edition BS", so why are you arguing the point?

That statement was a variable which comes with threads worth of contextual nuance, and you know it; You've been here for most of it. Don't take a sound bite for a dissertation.

It didn't become a watered down 3rd edition because of people complaining. It became that because that is what the designers worked towards progressively over an extended period of time. In the early packets, there was some hope that DDN would evolve in its own direction and could be an interesting and unique system in its own right. At this stage in development, that hope is gone.

I don't understand how you can say this, when there is catalogued history here and on other sites of people loudly proclaiming how crappy each and every packet was, because their new and exiting approaches 'lacked the sensibility of 3e's math', etc.

I mean, the progression of "get rid of this new stuff, just learn from 3e and improve that" is pretty clear.

Scow2

2013-12-28, 05:34 PM

Skill-wise, D&D Next characters cannot perform the same feats of absurdity D&D 3.5 characters can with consistency, yet they're better at pulling off stunts than their 3.5 counterparts without needing to optimize for a task.

But skills are very rough in D&D Next. But every D&D edition has had serious problems with skills - in 3.5, investment in skills resulted in either "Break the game", "Maintain full investment to keep up" (Pathfinder's worse with this than 3.5, tying acrobatics against CMD), or "Fall hopelessly behind"

D&D Next is currently too far in the opposite direction. On the other hand, you can do things with raw ability checks that you can't do in 3.5. That said, D&D Next skill checks still have bad math issues. But skills are irrelevant. The character sheet doesn't tell you all that your character can do - How you play him and what you have him attempt tells you what he can do.

Combat and exploration are much better in D&D Next than either 3.5 or 4e. 4e had a cool tactical game, but combats were balanced to drag on forever, emphasizing large set-piece battles, over the short, brutal ambushes that has been D&D's traditional combat model... well, actually, low-level combat tends to be short, brutal ambushes, while the high-level battles forgo 3.5's one-round Rocket Tag in favor of larger, dramatic set-piece battles. And the constraints on linear numeric progression means that you can continue to have short, brutal ambushes by sending low-level foes at the players, but they're genuinely better at surviving them. I can easily shift between 'battle' and 'exploration' mode far easier in D&D Next than I can in any other edition, with monsters functioning just as well as terrain/obstacles/traps as Big Epic Battles. Noncasters are also much more competent: AC is always a relevant defense, and the bonus offered by a shield remains useful at all levels of play. Two-handed weapons do appreciable more damage than single weapons (But damn, do I miss "Weapon Mastery". That was a cool feat for Two-handed weapon fighters), but don't outright eclipse everything else. Dual-wielding is also much nicer in D&D Next than 3.5.

The monk kicks far more ass in D&D Next than 3.5, because D&D Next's core gameplay makes the monk's abilities synergize: Lots of attacks and high movement allow you to smash your way across a battlefield, handling lesser mooks with ease, or deal significant damage while kiting bigger foes. And, the Teleport is at-will.

The June Packet barbarian was awesome. I'm holding onto that thing. We now have barbarians that don't need to wear armor (Always a plus in my book! Though, seriously, it should allow a shield. Sword+Board, TWFing, and THCombat should be distinct, class-agnostic options), and it doesn't suck like the unarmored barbarian archetype from Pathfinder. He was balanced against high-level foes at their level, and he's able to go Cu Cuchulain on armies of 1-HD mooks, gaining HP faster than he loses it in a rage. A shame they took that part out.

I saw someone say "A commoner beats a pit fiend in a grapple 20% of the time" - that is not true. A level 1 average strength character can manage to hurt a pit fiend in a grapple 20% of the time, or get lucky and escape a grapple with a pit fiend 20% of the time - but the Pit fiend will almost always win in the end, because a grapple is not a single roll.

Stealth has been borked in all editions. It's only real function is determining "Who gets the drop on who".

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll

2013-12-28, 05:46 PM

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-28, 05:49 PM

Stealth has been borked in all editions. It's only real function is determining "Who gets the drop on who".
Which is embarrassing when one of your Iconic Classes is the Thief :smalltongue:

IMHO, good Stealth Mechanics are just hard to do. I've yet to see a game that strides the gap between "able to actually sneak around" and "able to be used in play." I have hopes that Gold & Glory will manage that but I'm sure it's not just coincidence that countless RPGs have tried and failed to produce Stealth Mechanics that everyone can be happy with.

Scow2

2013-12-28, 05:59 PM

Which is embarrassing when one of your Iconic Classes is the Thief :smalltongue:

IMHO, good Stealth Mechanics are just hard to do. I've yet to see a game that strides the gap between "able to actually sneak around" and "able to be used in play." I have hopes that Gold & Glory will manage that but I'm sure it's not just coincidence that countless RPGs have tried and failed to produce Stealth Mechanics that everyone can be happy with.
The thief is actually pretty cool with stealth, being able to use it for more than just "Who gets the drop on who". Part of that is with the ability to take an action to hide again - and a thief gets LOTS of motion/stealth related actions. As soon as he hits level 2, the rogue gets an extra action each turn to move, disengage, or hide, making him great at recovering from botched stealth rolls or getting the hell out of dodge - if he screws up a stealth check, he can stealth again! If stealth is important to him, he can choose to take a Rogue Knack for skills for a flat +5 to them (BUt he has so few that he needs to specialize) - and that +5 is a big deal.

The only thing that causes the rogue problems is when enemies are allowed to throw a dozen perception checks to find him... but that's a problem of PC/NPC transparency. You want PCs and Significant NPCs to be able to have a reasonable chance of spotting a hidden foe, but it breaks down when you have "NPC HiveMind", where a single Nat 20 on the defense out of dozens of potential rolls completely screws someone trying to sneak past.

Scow2

2013-12-28, 06:21 PM

Given how radically skills have changed with each packet that addresses them, I'm assuming we haven't seen what they have in store - first we had just Ability Checks, then we had Skill Dice to shore up bad abilities, give a measure of consistency with routine abilities (And give a chance of extraordinary outcomes) but didn't scale with level well enough, then Lores that were just wat, and now they're testing the idea of unifying all mechanics under "Proficiency", but there's no guarantee that's what they'll go with in the end. There's just no consistency in what they're doing, so judging the system based on the least stable system is not fair to it.

I've not worked with magic enough to see how it's balanced, but there are a lot of cool unexploited ideas sitting on the table, such as unified spell slots... and with constrained abilities and actual class features, they could allow any character to access magic if they're Smart Enough, but genuine spellcasters have an advantage by being able to prepare more spells and do cool metamagic things with them. Powering magic items with spell slots is also a cool possibility.

With 3.5, I feel confined and claustrophobic (metaphorically) when it comes to bashing around and fixing up the system into something I like. The 5e playtest packets have left enough on the table that I can freely mix+match ideas, make new stuff, tweak systems, and get the game running the way I want it to.

With the reduced emphasis on numbers and relaxed action economy, it makes homebrewing new class features, races, and feats easier as well.

Myatar_Panwar

2013-12-28, 09:27 PM

Aasimar

2013-12-28, 09:42 PM

People are fully within their rights, when looking at shoddy playtest materials, not to have a lot of hope for their final product. Why, exactly, should I believe they'll do better later?

Some people also get off on being negative and bashing stuff to make themselves feel good.

There's lots of reasons really.

The game will either suck or not, let's just wait and see.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-28, 09:51 PM

wow, I said before that WotC is now shooting itself in the face...

but I didn't realize that their gun was an assault rifle they had their trigger pressed own upon continually.

how bad you think 5th edition will be at this point?
"Bad" is subjective as has been demonstrated int his thread.

As far as to how the market will respond, probably worse than 4e to be honest.

D&D has historically been a hard sell for many. Going from 2e to 3e was the cut-off point for many gamers. 3e brought in a lot more attention and sales because of the d20 OGL which allowed the game to become almost anything imaginable. If somebody thought "hey, could we play a game where..." there probably was a 3pp supplement.

The switch to 4e brought in a few new gamers, but ultimately it lost in sales wars because it was a lot less open to outside companies. Like the system or hate it, 4e was reliant upon WOTC and a few larger publishers who were resilient enough to push through red tape and a not-very-friendly agreement, but ultimately it suffered due to a slow product cycle. While 3e with support could punch out great supplements regularly 4e was slow moving in comparison, and the market has already moved to be more dynamic.

Further to 4e problems is the inevitable shrinking of market share. Again, D&D gamers tend to get really attached to their rulesets, so there would already be a small loss with anything new. This is anticipated and marketing is hoping for new gamers to make up the loss, and for enough older gamers to "convert" when the game is no longer supported. Except that the OGL allowed for Pathfinder to come along, a system close enough to 3e that anyone seeking fresh material didn't look towards 4e but to something more familiar.

A bit long-winded, but it sets up the 5e problem. First there is going to be losses as 4e players want to stick with their system, and 3e gamers are already having their needs mostly met by continued product support in Pathfinder. Second, 5e has decided to pretty much abandon 4e style play, reverting to something more like 3e + elements from wherever, which means that when looking for new material the 4e player will be not catered to by 5e and thus will again look outward for a more compatible system. Thirdly and finally, WOTC is still keeping things as close to in-house as possible which leads again to either a slow release cycle or rushed and poorly tested releases.

And another, more final, finally, there are fewer new gamers who will jump on board a new D&D system. Marketing has not done enough to refurbish the D&D name, so unless something major happens in the next few months the D&D name will still carry age baggage, and many new players will avoid something "old", even if the mechanics are new. Alternately, those with no set opinion will not see D&D as "The Name" in pen and paper RPGs but just another choice, and overall the Next packets have shown the game to be bland and not very attractive to brand new gamers.

The comment was made that this could be the last D&D system published under Hasbro, and that is entirely possible. Hasbro wants more market share and more sales, not a shrinking market share which is almost certain to happen. Unless they can pull off something major like making the D&D name fresh, or something like the OGL to give the game major product support Dungeons and Dragons could be over as we know it. The market is flooded more than ever before with new and original game systems and it takes a lot of effort to carve out an empire, and 5e doesn't appaer to have what it takes.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-12-28, 10:22 PM

That said, D&D Next skill checks still have bad math issues. But skills are irrelevant.

If skills are so irrelevant, then the issues with the 3e and 4e skill systems shouldn't bother you at all. If, on the other hand, you actually do care about what your character can accomplish mechanically, 5e's skill system is not a meaningful improvement over either of them.

The character sheet doesn't tell you all that your character can do - How you play him and what you have him attempt tells you what he can do.

Hardly. A 3e fighter can attempt a whole lot of skill checks, but he can't do much with just 2+Int skill points and no skill-enhancing spells, items, or class features. The idea that the world is your oyster and you can do absolutely anything you can imagine is a nice and alluring one, but even in very minimal games like Fate there's a big difference between the list of things you can attempt to do and the list of things you can reliable succeed in doing.

I can easily shift between 'battle' and 'exploration' mode far easier in D&D Next than I can in any other edition, with monsters functioning just as well as terrain/obstacles/traps as Big Epic Battles.

4e certainly intends monsters to be used in Big Epic Battles, but AD&D and 3e monsters can be obstacles, traps, allies, guides, or anything else just like 5e monsters--indeed, all of the "trap" monsters like green slime and gelatinous cubes come from AD&D in the first place, and there are plenty of AD&D/3e monsters with terrain-altering abilities to let them serve as literal terrain.

The only thing that causes the rogue problems is when enemies are allowed to throw a dozen perception checks to find him... but that's a problem of PC/NPC transparency. You want PCs and Significant NPCs to be able to have a reasonable chance of spotting a hidden foe, but it breaks down when you have "NPC HiveMind", where a single Nat 20 on the defense out of dozens of potential rolls completely screws someone trying to sneak past.

That's not a transparency issue, that's just a general problem with group checks: If you have a group of sneakers and a group of perceivers, the sneakers fail if a single member of the group fails and the perceivers succeed if a single member of the group succeeds, whether you have PCs on the sneaking side, perceiving side, both sides, or neither side.

The appropriate solution is to come up with good rules for group checks. Coming up with such a system in 5e would be difficult given bounded accuracy and single degrees of advantage and disadvantage, but could be done.

There's just no consistency in what they're doing, so judging the system based on the least stable system is not fair to it.

On the contrary, judging an inconsistent system based on an unstable version of it is perfectly fair, because that might very well be the system we end up with. There's no clear progression away from throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks towards a complete and mathematically sound system that we can point to and say "Yes, they know what they're doing here, we probably won't end up with an unstable skill system."

With 3.5, I feel confined and claustrophobic (metaphorically) when it comes to bashing around and fixing up the system into something I like. The 5e playtest packets have left enough on the table that I can freely mix+match ideas, make new stuff, tweak systems, and get the game running the way I want it to.

With the reduced emphasis on numbers and relaxed action economy, it makes homebrewing new class features, races, and feats easier as well.

3e is hardly a rigid, inflexible, un-moddable system; the myriad of d20 variant products and bazillions of 3e threads in the Homebrew forum prove that much. 5e is only easier to homebrew for insofar as rules-light systems are easier to homebrew for than rules-heavy systems because they have fewer moving parts. Heck, one of the common reactions to 5e is "This system is boring, but X, Y, and Z are interesting, so I'll steal those and add them to my 3e game."

TuggyNE

2013-12-29, 12:04 AM

Heck, one of the common reactions to 5e is "This system is boring, but X, Y, and Z are interesting, so I'll steal those and add them to my 3e game."

Underlined for great justice.

Mind you, 4e has some ideas that are periodically back-ported to 3.x; minions, mostly, from what I've seen. But since 5e seems lacking in the most significant changes of 4e (namely, mathematical soundness and careful attention to scaling in nearly every way), and in general seems to lack any unique feature that can't be duplicated in previous editions with a touch of homebrew, it doesn't seem to really have much going for it.

Scow2

2013-12-29, 12:44 AM

Tablesalt

2013-12-29, 12:48 AM

There seems to be quite a bit of hate on 5e going on at the moment. I thought I might just throw in my own opinion.

About a page back, someone was talking about how the system would do, financially, and brought up the subject of new players. To digress in that direction for a moment, all of the people I've known who've wanted to get into tabletop gaming have sought out the D&D brand first. Most, at first, referred to the entire genre/format as "Dungeons and Dragons." If, as (I think?) has been stated by someone at Wizards, the core of 5e will be a single, relatively inexpensive book, that could certainly help with drawing in new players. I remember being intimidated by the $90 price tag just to start playing 3.5, back when I was a wee lad.

Somewhat relatedly, one of the strong points of 5e seems to be that it's easy for new players to pick up. Admittedly, I only have limited experience here, but I ran a game for four people who had never played any tabletop RPG before, using one of the later playtest packet and pregen characters, and, as far as I can remember, they picked it up within maybe ten minutes, including the spell-slot system. My 3.5 group, who, admittedly, made their own characters, were a bit more flighty personality-wise, and had a less experienced DM, took a few sessions to get the hang of the system.

Advantage/disadvantage is a simple and fun mechanic, there are few modifiers to keep track of, and important decisions (feats, individual allotment of skill points, and subclass) aren't shoved at you at first level. In addition, flanking, attacks of opportunity, grappling, and such are either removed or simplified. Experienced players can add on houserules and homebrew to their heart's content; new groups need an easily understandable core. In that, I definitely think that 5e has succeeded, so far.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-29, 12:50 AM

Mind you, 4e has some ideas that are periodically back-ported to 3.x; minions, mostly, from what I've seen. But since 5e seems lacking in the most significant changes of 4e (namely, mathematical soundness and careful attention to scaling in nearly every way), and in general seems to lack any unique feature that can't be duplicated in previous editions with a touch of homebrew, it doesn't seem to really have much going for it.
In a way, this best reveals the horns of the dilemma that WotC has found itself.

(1) It has convinced itself that 4e was "too new" for its Target Market and so it doesn't want to make another game that is "too new."

(2) Any insufficiently new game is comparatively simple to back-port into the consumer's Game Of Choice which means there is little incentive to undergo Edition Change.

This is why, for example, you don't see a lot of AD&D games out there which ported in Feats, Skill Points and New Multiclassing from 3.0 -- it would take so much effort to move in the "good stuff" that you might as well just take the game as-is. Likewise, the idea of the "minion" from 4e can be ported back into 3.P but the execution et al is sufficiently different that you simply have to play 4e to get the full effect. Apparently the change from 2e to 3e was not mind-shattering to the Target Market while the 3e to 4e change was -- but neither you, me, nor the entire staff of WotC can tell you where that line can be found.

My personal opinion is it doesn't exist.
Edition Change is, and always has been, a filter: those who dislike change or simply have settled for their One True Game don't move onwards while everyone else does. The lack of corporate support for previous editions has generally put more pressure through the filter so that more people end up in the new Edition than not. In 4e you had new circumstances (e.g The Internet, Paizo providing Legacy Support + Development, new avenues for entertainment) that squeezed fewer people through the filter and made the filtering process incredibly noisy.

So, rather than take a look at the Big Picture, the Powers That Be in WotC bought the narrative that 4e was simply too "new" and that the only was to survive was to re-do the 4e transition with a "less new" game. Of course, Time Marches On (hence the continual emergence of new Editions and games) and while Paizo has its bread & butter today it is questionable how many people will still be playing Pathfinder in 10 years, let alone whenever Paizo decides to try to move its change-adverse customers into a new system.

By looking for the line that isn't there, WotC is falling into the same trap Paizo has found itself (albeit WotC has done it far more expensively) and is setting itself up for a giant flop of a new Edition -- and the probable mothballing of D&D by Hasbro for years to come.

EDIT:
@Tablesalt -- IMHO, WotC's unpardonable sin is not making 5e a game that a novice can run well without having to be Taught.
It is inexcusable for a RPG made 40 years after the concept was created to fail to consider how to teach people to play the game. We should all know what makes RPGs "fun" and it would be a shame if the designers of the system had no idea how to make their mechanics work properly without experienced hands at the wheels.

Look at Board Games, for goodness sake! While simpler in many ways, there isn't a decent board game out today that doesn't inform you about basic strategies and the "fun conflicts" that make such things enjoyable. Look at the rules we have; the sample campaigns we have. If you had never played a RPG in your life, how do you think you are supposed to know how to have fun with those rules? When I look at them, I see dozens of little tricks and tweaks that I'd need to use to run a coherent adventure -- let alone campaign -- which I only learned over decades of trial and error. Is some 12 year old going to think that's a good use of his time? No, unless he has some Big Brother type to teach him how such games are fun. Why rely on a middle man when writing a "how to" guide for your own damn game should be one of the first steps you undertake when putting the game together!

Scow2

2013-12-29, 12:58 AM

I don't have as bleak an outlook on D&D Next.

D&D iterations are supposed to be refinements and reiterations of the same core experience, from OD&D, to BECMI and AD&D, to AD&D 2, to 3e... 4e fell to the wayside... and now to 5e.

Kick in the door (If it's not made of Railroad Iron, you have at least a 25% chance of success on the first try) after probing it with an 111/2' pole, sweep the area with rocks, get jumped by goblins, see you're gonna get overwhelmed by reinforcements, bar the door, run away, steal the treasure, kill the reinforcements on the way out, level up, go overland, be whatever crazy race/class combo you want, save the day... and wear scale armor!

Whiteagle

2013-12-29, 01:31 AM

The only thing that causes the rogue problems is when enemies are allowed to throw a dozen perception checks to find him... but that's a problem of PC/NPC transparency. You want PCs and Significant NPCs to be able to have a reasonable chance of spotting a hidden foe, but it breaks down when you have "NPC HiveMind", where a single Nat 20 on the defense out of dozens of potential rolls completely screws someone trying to sneak past.

The appropriate solution is to come up with good rules for group checks. Coming up with such a system in 5e would be difficult given bounded accuracy and single degrees of advantage and disadvantage, but could be done.

Clearly, DMs need to have NPC guards make a Persuasion Check to successfully convey where the Rouge is located!

There seems to be quite a bit of hate on 5e going on at the moment. I thought I might just throw in my own opinion.

About a page back, someone was talking about how the system would do, financially, and brought up the subject of new players. To digress in that direction for a moment, all of the people I've known who've wanted to get into tabletop gaming have sought out the D&D brand first. Most, at first, referred to the entire genre/format as "Dungeons and Dragons." If, as (I think?) has been stated by someone at Wizards, the core of 5e will be a single, relatively inexpensive book, that could certainly help with drawing in new players. I remember being intimidated by the $90 price tag just to start playing 3.5, back when I was a wee lad.

Somewhat relatedly, one of the strong points of 5e seems to be that it's easy for new players to pick up. Admittedly, I only have limited experience here, but I ran a game for four people who had never played any tabletop RPG before, using one of the later playtest packet and pregen characters, and, as far as I can remember, they picked it up within maybe ten minutes, including the spell-slot system. My 3.5 group, who, admittedly, made their own characters, were a bit more flighty personality-wise, and had a less experienced DM, took a few sessions to get the hang of the system.

Advantage/disadvantage is a simple and fun mechanic, there are few modifiers to keep track of, and important decisions (feats, individual allotment of skill points, and subclass) aren't shoved at you at first level. In addition, flanking, attacks of opportunity, grappling, and such are either removed or simplified. Experienced players can add on houserules and homebrew to their heart's content; new groups need an easily understandable core. In that, I definitely think that 5e has succeeded, so far.
Indeed, which is probably why I love this Edition; I'm going to have to be the guy that teaches everyone else how to play!

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-12-29, 02:10 AM

Somewhat relatedly, one of the strong points of 5e seems to be that it's easy for new players to pick up. Admittedly, I only have limited experience here, but I ran a game for four people who had never played any tabletop RPG before, using one of the later playtest packet and pregen characters, and, as far as I can remember, they picked it up within maybe ten minutes, including the spell-slot system. My 3.5 group, who, admittedly, made their own characters, were a bit more flighty personality-wise, and had a less experienced DM, took a few sessions to get the hang of the system.

It's kind of difficult to talk about "new players" as a single homogenous group, or to talk about the difficulty of picking up a given system as if everyone will approach it in the same way. Certain aspects of a game can make it easier or harder to pick up, but some people will intuitively grasp certain games and others will keep scratching their head for a long time.

AD&D is often proclaimed to be a byzantine mess that's hard to keep straight even for experienced players, but I started playing with a friend of mine as his family when I was 8 years old--and my first character was a gnome illusionist/thief, not exactly the easiest character to start with. I recently started DMing 3e for a new group of 8 people, none of whom had played it before, and some of them were asking what die to roll for skills three sessions in while others were picking sleep over burning hands for their wizards from the start. I've GMed some story-centric games like the Dresden Files and Mistborn RPGs for people who had lots of MMORPG and cRPG experience, and the different playstyle of the PnP games just never clicked with some of them no matter how long we played.

It seems like 5e is trying to make "easy to learn" one of its selling points, and is doing things like "streamlining" the fighter (read: removing everything interesting and tactical from it) to accomplish that. If 5e tries to sacrifice depth, innovation, and other desirable attributes to try to be easy to learn, not only can that drive away experienced players who want that depth/innovation/etc. over simplicity to learn, but it very well might just not work for the sort of new player they want to attract.

Edition Change is, and always has been, a filter: those who dislike change or simply have settled for their One True Game don't move onwards while everyone else does.

I think depicting prior-edition holdouts as people who think change is bad (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks) (warning, TVTropes link) or who have merely "settled" for a game and assuming that switching to the newest edition is the default isn't really fair.

There are plenty of other reasons why people don't "trade up" (like one player in my group who loves playing 3e but DMs 2e for another group because none of them had the disposable income to spend on a bunch of new books). The way you phrased it kind of implies that changing to the newest edition should be automatic and it's the players' fault if they don't like it, when in fact there are plenty of actual flaws in new editions (of any game; witness the furor over Shadowrun 5e, nWoD, etc.) that might prevent people from switching.

Just to Browse

2013-12-29, 03:09 AM

There are a lot of games that are easy to play, like D&D 4e, Munchausen, Rage-Precognition-Grace, Hi/Lo Heroes, d02, Apocalypse World, and Old School Hack. Those games are great for new players who don't want to read much, but come with the benefit of being interesting, with a functional rule set.

Right now you can play Apocalypse World or OSH and have semi-functional stealth and diplomacy rules. At least Munchausen has an agreed-upon action resolution system for common occurrences, so no one tries to look up non-existent rules. At least the whack skill challenge rules in 4e were all listed in the same place, and not scattered throughout the PHB.

I mean, I respect the desire for easy-to-learn games, but when there are games that fill the same niche with decent rulesets, I question your reasoning not to switch over.

EDIT: The world seems to have gone quiet about this, but modules will forever infuriate me. Stuff like grappling, diplomacy, and so on need to be in the core of the game. Assuming I'm going to take a half-written encounter entry and add the details of each of my chosen "modules" so it fits my interests is crazy and more time-consuming than just reading a longer entry on its own.

Scow2

2013-12-29, 03:11 AM

The only non-functional part of D&D Next is the skill system, which they've completely overhauled with each packet that focused on it.

Just to Browse

2013-12-29, 03:13 AM

Yes, "the skill system" being "everything except combat, plus some enormous things that are part of combat".

andresrhoodie

2013-12-29, 03:44 AM

andresrhoodie

2013-12-29, 04:00 AM

Jacob.Tyr

2013-12-29, 04:15 AM

Sadly he is wrong and you could have downloaded the packets anytime during the last year.

Just like the rest of us.

Then you wouldnt need 3rd party opinion

Man, I hate it when opinions are wrong.

Morty

2013-12-29, 05:56 AM

Perseus

2013-12-29, 09:38 AM

Meh. I prefer the combat math of 5e (And the class construction - MUCH better than 3rd edition), so I'm probably going to get D&D Next, add in all the stuff abandoned from previous packets, and forward-port stuff from 3.5 4e into it.

I would love to see that finished product. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

One of my favorite games outside if d&d is Heroes Against Darkness, which is like a 2e, 3e, 4e D&D mash up. There are things I would like to see changed in that game as well but for what it is (port of different editions, mainly 3e + 4e) it did a good job.

But I'm really hoping the skill systems they have been showing us have been fake skill systems that they never planed to put in the final game...and they have an awesome skill system that will knock our socks off... Or at the very least be better than previous editions.

Though I'm somewhat afraid that it will be "choose 3.5 or 4e, that is the skill system your character uses".

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-29, 10:47 AM

I think depicting prior-edition holdouts as people who think change is bad (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks) (warning, TVTropes link) or who have merely "settled" for a game and assuming that switching to the newest edition is the default isn't really fair.

There are plenty of other reasons why people don't "trade up" (like one player in my group who loves playing 3e but DMs 2e for another group because none of them had the disposable income to spend on a bunch of new books). The way you phrased it kind of implies that changing to the newest edition should be automatic and it's the players' fault if they don't like it, when in fact there are plenty of actual flaws in new editions (of any game; witness the furor over Shadowrun 5e, nWoD, etc.) that might prevent people from switching.
To be fair, while I personally prefer to play newer rather than older games, I would be the first amongst you to argue de gustibus non est disputandum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandum) -- you play the game you want to play.

What my Rant was really referring to was the market, not the individuals. While change for its own sake may not be good, change doesn't just happen for its own sake: through experience people discover new and better ways of accomplishing things they already do, and invent entirely new things to do. There is a reason the number of people (both absolute and relative) who play video games on an Atari or using Red Box D&D is smaller today than when either system was new. Time Marches On.

Even with the Long Tail available via the Internet, "antique" RPGs are simply not as popular or widely played as newer ones -- despite their existing Network Effect. Newer systems have better mechanics; they've solved bugs that were baked into the system 20 years ago. There is nothing morally wrong with continuing to play buggy systems but it would be delusional to think something 10 years old would continue to gain (much less maintain) market share as the Creative Destruction of the marketplace continues apace. You can build Model Railroads to your heart's content, but if Sony decided their next game system would be a Model Railroad instead of a Console people would rightly scratch their heads in bemusement.

Joe the Rat

2013-12-29, 01:31 PM

The problem with making a game accessible to new players is that you're only a new player for a couple of sessions. So if you sacrifice depth, complexity and innovation on the altar of making the game easy to pick up, like D&D Next does, it may be easy for a new player to understand, but after the player is no longer new, he or she is left with a flat game that offers little more.

That's not to mention new players who don't mind complexity and don't need to be hand-held, obviously.
I think this is what the optional rules bit was supposed to cover: Your Red Box Essentials core ruleset gives you enough to learn and run on, with the add-on optional rules to give you more complexity and customization once you get the hang of things. If you're an old hand, you can plug in backgrounds or skills or feats or ... whatever the hell they actually make optional given that half this stuff needs to be hard-coded in some form to make the rules function as a coherent whole. Which also is supposed to give you a stripped-down "old school" type game... which really isn't about rule complexity in the first place (have you seen 1st ed pugilism?)

What DDN needs to be something that gives the novice player and DM enough to be able to pick up and play, and provide enough options to grow into a more detailed, customizable, or complex system if that is what people want. Or keep playing it 'basic.' I think the potential is there, but it's a formula that's easy to muck up. Let's hope 'bounded accuracy' doesn't also bring on 'bounded optional elements.' I have hopes, but I'm an optimist.

Re: market share. Yeah, they're pretty much hosed unless they can provide something that everyone will be at least more-than-a-bit curious about, sticks around long enough for it to be the starter game for another generation... and becomes the default that all of their other licensed media uses for mechanics (From their last announcement, I'm hearing new electronic offerings - probably more mobile and social media games, maybe a proper MMO or PC set. Is anyone else hearing that undertone?).

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll

2013-12-29, 01:50 PM

Sadly he is wrong and you could have downloaded the packets anytime during the last year.

Just like the rest of us.

Then you wouldnt need 3rd party opinion

Gosh, how nice of you. Glad to know I'm not allowed to want to learn if I hadn't picked up on this earlier. Glad to know that not having picked up the packets when they were available means my opinions dont matter and I have no right to inquire as to the shape of the game.

... Yeah, sorry, that argument makes no sense. I have just as much right to be interested in DND next now even if I hadn't been following it earlier. And as such, I (and I imagine the vast majority of the market) must create my opinion of the game on 3rd party arguments.

If you can't construct an argument for why dndn is bad that can convince me (representing the majority of the market that hasn't been play testing), then I will be convinced by the argument that you say is "wrong" without proof.

Seerow

2013-12-29, 03:09 PM

Gosh, how nice of you. Glad to know I'm not allowed to want to learn if I hadn't picked up on this earlier. Glad to know that not having picked up the packets when they were available means my opinions dont matter and I have no right to inquire as to the shape of the game.

... Yeah, sorry, that argument makes no sense. I have just as much right to be interested in DND next now even if I hadn't been following it earlier. And as such, I (and I imagine the vast majority of the market) must create my opinion of the game on 3rd party arguments.

If you can't construct an argument for why dndn is bad that can convince me (representing the majority of the market that hasn't been play testing), then I will be convinced by the argument that you say is "wrong" without proof.

I'm kind of curious what they've said that's convinced you. Because all I've seen is blind optimism that they've been working on the "real system" behind closed doors while feeding us crap that nobody would actually take as a real game as a playtest for literal years.

It's basically an outright admission that if you had seen the packets, you wouldn't like it. Because even the most avid supporters of DDN don't like most of the stuff in the packets. They like one or two specific things, and hope that those are the things the developers keep while rewriting literally everything else.

The problem with the system is that it tries too hard to strip everything down. Your core system is you pick a class, a race, and a handful of skills. Okay, that sounds familiar enough. But then you look at what each of these actually does:

Class: Feats and ability score increases are now listed as class features. This seems to have been introduced in response to people complaining about dead levels and classes not getting enough cool toys to play with in play. So they took away feats and ability score increases from level up, and rolled them into class, to disguise the fact that they hadn't actually added anything new to any of the classes. At some point all characters were getting resource systems, and then they decided to remove those rather than refining them.

Some classes can get these resources back through archtypes. For example, see the Fighter. With the Gladiator Martial Path, you gain expertise dice that can be spent on a couple of abilities. but an optional resource system also means basically never expanding options. And picking that optional resource system nets you 4 options that can utilize it throughout all of your levels. Basically all of which are just "+1d6 to some roll".

Similar patterns repeat through other classes. Caster classes get full spell progression, but get neutered both in terms of spell effectiveness and spells per day. They also get dropped back in the feats/ability scores area, and in exchange pick up a few features nobody really cares about. They're in every way a watered down and less interesting version of 3.5 equivalents.

The big problem is there's nothing new and exciting, or even remotely interesting about the design here. It's all about taking stuff that has existed before, watering down, and then giving back a little of what was there before but putting it on the class table so it doesn't look so empty. Early in the playtest there was a lot of potential here, as they were experimenting with different resources, ability distribution, etc. Towards the end, they settled back into the 3.X rut, and if that is what you want you're probably happier playing 3.X.
Skills: This is the big thing Scow seems to like, for reasons I am incapable of comprehending. Skills are now primarily based off your attributes. Your attributes are now capped at 20, and most likely you're stuck at 16 unless you want to spend feats improving the attribute. This may be a worthwhile option early in the edition, as feat options continue to be printed, I don't expect anyone will ever actually max out attributes over actually getting anything interesting.

But anyway, it's hard to tell what to actually like about skills themselves, because as has been noted they changed frequently. In fact, in the last packet I downloaded (middle of August), Skills had been removed entirely in favor of Backgrounds and Lore. So skills as we tend to think of them (being used for social interactions, stealth, exploration) are all gone. Instead the only skills you get are Knowledge based skills (any knowledge skill you have from background you get +10 on) and "traits", which are a simple benefit you get from your background such as "I can craft mundane weapons and armor" or "I have a fake ID".

I assume at least one new packet came out since then with a new iteration, since Scow was talking about getting to train 3 skills from background and 1 skill from class. This sounds a lot like the skill system that was used between March and June, where you picked 4 skills to train at character creation. You then get to add a skill die to any skill you have trained (+1d6). As you level up, this gets as high as 1d12 by level 17. You can choose to forgoe increasing your skill die in favor of gaining a new skill. Over the course of 20 levels you could end up with 7 skills with +1d6, or 4 skills with +1d12. Assuming averages and even giving the benefit of rounding up, that's at most effectively 28 skill ranks, with a maximum cap of 7 skill ranks. Combine this with the low attribute caps, and you have a system where characters don't actually get meaningfully better at using skills they're trained in, going from an average roll of 16 at level 1 for a trained skill with a good stat to an average roll of 21 for a 1d12 trained skill with a capped stat.

The argument made here is that the system is better because nobody ever becomes obsoleted, and everyone can contribute. And while this is ostensibly true, the fact is it also means that nobody is ever really good enough at anything to reliably succeed at what should be an easy task. Additionally, there is never a challenge so difficult that you actually need someone with training to succeed at it. You can say that this makes the Fighter more heroic because he can contribute to more situations... but the same is true of Bob Joe the Commoner who can contribute at an effectiveness that is frankly absurd when you consider what the RNG and basic attributes allow him to obtain compared to professional adventurers.

Race: These are pretty boring and not much to say about them. They're supposedly one of the three cornerstones of your character, but just like every edition of D&D before, they're relatively minor, and mostly fluff. Most races get +1 to two set attributes, and a handful of minor perks that may or may not come in handy. The human gets +1 to all attributes. Half-Orc is notable as getting not just a +2 to str, but also +1 to con, and still getting some perks. Nothing to majorly complain about here, but nothing new compared to older editions, except for the further watering down of abilities.

Like I said, at the beginning I saw glimmers of hope, and was among those arguing for patience and waiting to see what happens. But the last half-dozen packets or so all went in a downward spiral, continuing to water down features and reduce overall capability at all levels, rather than introducing more interesting elements. That continued direction towards taking everything interesting away, rather than making everything more interesting, is what has ultimately turned me off to this new edition. I'll probably check out reviews of the core book when it's actually published, but I am far from optimistic at this point. Design teams don't just do a complete 180 on their design direction once placed behind closed doors.

As the topic title of this thread states, they're desperately trying to play it safe, and as a result aren't going to produce anything new or innovative enough to capture a significant portion of the market. It doesn't have enough uniqueness to stand on its own merits, and in desperately trying to please everybody at once they've failed to produce something that will actually capture a significant market share from fans of any other particular edition.

Morty

2013-12-29, 03:27 PM

Some classes can get these resources back through archtypes. For example, see the Fighter. With the Gladiator Martial Path, you gain expertise dice that can be spent on a couple of abilities. but an optional resource system also means basically never expanding options. And picking that optional resource system nets you 4 options that can utilize it throughout all of your levels. Basically all of which are just "+1d6 to some roll".

This here is important, because the Gladiator option for the Fighter was described as a "complex option" that you pick if you want a character with more tactical depth. It's an actual example of WotC's planned modularity in action... and it is what it is.

andresrhoodie

2013-12-29, 03:30 PM

SiuiS

2013-12-29, 03:43 PM

If skills are so irrelevant, then the issues with the 3e and 4e skill systems shouldn't bother you at all. If, on the other hand, you actually do care about what your character can accomplish mechanically, 5e's skill system is not a meaningful improvement over either of them.

I call foul on this one, Dice. You cut out the important context of the idea, here. It was that skills in next aren't relevant because "skill" is just "bonus to a specific application of an attribute roll", and you can attempt literally anything – and possibly achieve literally anything too, once the guidelines for difficulty are in place.

Taking the sentence "this, because that" and removing everything after the comma is by it's nature going to give you a weird view of things.

Hardly. A 3e fighter can attempt a whole lot of skill checks, but he can't do much with just 2+Int skill points and no skill-enhancing spells, items, or class features. The idea that the world is your oyster and you can do absolutely anything you can imagine is a nice and alluring one, but even in very minimal games like Fate there's a big difference between the list of things you can attempt to do and the list of things you can reliable succeed in doing.

What does the 3e fighter have to do with this? He was talking about next specifically. This is disingenuous. I assume it's a misunderstanding of the idea?

On the contrary, judging an inconsistent system based on an unstable version of it is perfectly fair, because that might very well be the system we end up with. There's no clear progression away from throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks towards a complete and mathematically sound system that we can point to and say "Yes, they know what they're doing here, we probably won't end up with an unstable skill system.

But there is also no clear proof they were throwing things at a wall to see what sticks. The progression seemed to follow a clear path based on the nature of an open online playtest. They threw specific thiga out to test them, while altering other variables as well to change the nature of responses. They did so with opacity and seeming-randomness to prevent many ideas from being back-engineered, and had a seemingly working draft the whole time, of which only the pieces relevant to the testing framework were given.

That sounds more like a scientific study to me than random tossing of spaghetti.

3e is hardly a rigid, inflexible, un-moddable system; the myriad of d20 variant products and bazillions of 3e threads in the Homebrew forum prove that much. 5e is only easier to homebrew for insofar as rules-light systems are easier to homebrew for than rules-heavy systems because they have fewer moving parts. Heck, one of the common reactions to 5e is "This system is boring, but X, Y, and Z are interesting, so I'll steal those and add them to my 3e game."

Full agreement here, d20 and 3e in particular are fantastically modular, so much so that it's become part of gamer consciousness and made less modular games seem screwed up by comparison.

Meh. I prefer the combat math of 5e (And the class construction - MUCH better than 3rd edition), so I'm probably going to get D&D Next, add in all the stuff abandoned from previous packets, and forward-port stuff from 3.5 4e into it.

Pretty much. I think the best version of D&D is going to be the custom one.

I need to get hard copies of the older rules again...

(1) It has convinced itself that 4e was "too new" for its Target Market and so it doesn't want to make another game that is "too new."

Where is this coming from?

This is why, for example, you don't see a lot of AD&D games out there which ported in Feats, Skill Points and New Multiclassing from 3.0 -- it would take so much effort to move in the "good stuff" that you might as well just take the game as-is.

What? That doesn't make any sense. I saw 2.5 AD&D played all the time. Fourth edition was coming out by the time most of the gaming groups I knew had stopped playing 2e with some new stuff and moved to playing 3e with some old stuff.

Proficiencies are already feats, especially with the martial arts systems brought out by the ninja's handbook and the older Oriental adventures supplement. Multi classing was already possible and most folks allowed dual classing (modern multiclassing) because they liked the idea; there just wasn't as much of an exploit involved of combining classes so you didn't get a bunch of cherry picking, people just used kits or on occasion the DMG class building guidelines to make the class they wanted.

Skill points didn't exist because they weren't necessary; you ended up with a feat based skill system that assumed basic competency in all tasks because you're an adventurer not a gifted peasant. But the feat design protocols and skill uses from third very definitely made it back to AD&D. They were, in fact, taken from AD&D.

EDIT:
@Tablesalt -- IMHO, WotC's unpardonable sin is not making 5e a game that a novice can run well without having to be Taught.
It is inexcusable for a RPG made 40 years after the concept was created to fail to consider how to teach people to play the game. We should all know what makes RPGs "fun" and it would be a shame if the designers of the system had no idea how to make their mechanics work properly without experienced hands at the wheels.

Look at Board Games, for goodness sake! While simpler in many ways, there isn't a decent board game out today that doesn't inform you about basic strategies and the "fun conflicts" that make such things enjoyable. Look at the rules we have; the sample campaigns we have. If you had never played a RPG in your life, how do you think you are supposed to know how to have fun with those rules? When I look at them, I see dozens of little tricks and tweaks that I'd need to use to run a coherent adventure -- let alone campaign -- which I only learned over decades of trial and error. Is some 12 year old going to think that's a good use of his time? No, unless he has some Big Brother type to teach him how such games are fun. Why rely on a middle man when writing a "how to" guide for your own damn game should be one of the first steps you undertake when putting the game together!

You've seen the final product, then?

Clearly, DMs need to have NPC guards make a Persuasion Check to successfully convey where the Rouge is located!

Else how will the thief know to steal the makeup?

There are a lot of games that are easy to play, like D&D 4e, Munchausen, Rage-Precognition-Grace, Hi/Lo Heroes, d02, Apocalypse World, and Old School Hack. Those games are great for new players who don't want to read much, but come with the benefit of being interesting, with a functional rule set.

Quoted for a list.

EDIT: The world seems to have gone quiet about this, but modules will forever infuriate me. Stuff like grappling, diplomacy, and so on need to be in the core of the game. Assuming I'm going to take a half-written encounter entry and add the details of each of my chosen "modules" so it fits my interests is crazy and more time-consuming than just reading a longer entry on its own.

Hmm. I'm of two very conflicted minds on this.

Yes, "the skill system" being "everything except combat, plus some enormous things that are part of combat".

How so?

As of right now, what exactly does next do ?

Get tested behind closed doors by the company that is making it.

Sadly he is wrong and you could have downloaded the packets anytime during the last year.

Just like the rest of us.

Then you wouldnt need 3rd party opinion

1) prove he's wrong. As noted, statements aren't doing it without proof.
2) and?
3) second hand information (not third, that would be Gwynn himself stating something) is not bad when it is informed. We have a system I. Place socially wherein people who can present reasonable respectable arguments get their words weighted better than people who are rude and incomprehensible, vague, rarely sensible and often antagonistic.
I may not have done experiments on tensile strength myself to verify, but I can trust an engineer about that data. I can't trust a computer programmer.

I would love to see that finished product. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

Aye.

Scow2

2013-12-29, 04:20 PM

but the same is true of Bob Joe the Commoner who can contribute at an effectiveness that is frankly absurd when you consider what the RNG and basic attributes allow him to obtain compared to professional adventurers.Every playable character in the game is a Professional Adventurer. If Bob Joe the Commoner is making ability checks, it means he's a player character and thus a professional adventurer.

4th Edition had the best system of handling ability checks, IMO: Proficiency, Ability Score, and 1/2 Level (Because leveling doesn't represent merely how good you are in your field, but also as how awesome you are at Life in general)

But, the 1/2 level thing caused too many problems for others (WHY IS MUH PALADIN GETTING BETTAR AT THEIFING?).

Frankly, I like that characters are kept near human limit (except in durability, damage dealing, and actions/round) at all levels of play.

Casting, IMO, has hit a good balance between "Marvelous and effective" and "Not God Tier", while still giving good progression.

Seerow

2013-12-29, 05:23 PM

Every playable character in the game is a Professional Adventurer. If Bob Joe the Commoner is making ability checks, it means he's a player character and thus a professional adventurer.

So NPCs never have to make a check? If you have a commoner he automatically fails at everything? Takes massive penalties to his rolls? What? I've never seen anything like that in any iteration of the playtest. There was never anything to indicate only PCs make ability checks.

And of course if you give PCs a +X awesome bonus, or negate the -X Not A PC Penalty, then you run into the problem of...

But, the 1/2 level thing caused too many problems for others (WHY IS MUH PALADIN GETTING BETTAR AT THEIFING?).

Because in either case the Paladin is only 4-5 points behind the thief at thiefing. Except it's worse in DDN because attributes are more closely limited. So where before a Paladin with 12 dex vs a Rogue with 30 dex was totally possible, now you've got a Paladin with 10 dex vs a Rogue with 20. So the Paladin is comparatively better at thiefing than the 4e paladin. If the goal was to fix that issue, then the system has failed at that pretty spectacularly.

Frankly, I like that characters are kept near human limit (except in durability, damage dealing, and actions/round) at all levels of play.

The problem isn't just being kept within the human limit. I've played games stuck in heroic tier. I've been playing E6 rather extensively recently. I play Shadowrun and other games where staying closer to the bounds of human limits is a much bigger deal for the game than any iteration of D&D to date.

The problem is that the human limits being set by DDN don't even fill basic human competency. When you have the absolute best character in the world capable of regularly failing a check that we see happening in real life with regularity, that's a serious issue. If I can watch Top Shot and see real life marksmen doing crazy trick shots with 30-50% accuracy, and see a top tier character in DDN capable of such a thing maybe 5% of the time, I'm going to have problems with it. By the same token, if I see that top end character capable of doing it 50% of the time, but the guy with no training in that area at all can do it 10-15% of the time (which is what happens in bounded accuracy), I'm also going to have trouble with accepting that. Because I know if you handed me a gun, I could barely hit a target 20ft in front of me with no negative modifiers at all. Much less even attempt any of those trick shots.

And to be clear, I'm using trick shooting as an example. The same applies to basically any skill. There's a huge range of proficiency, and there is almost always things an expert can do that a novice is completely incapable of. A skill system that fails to represent that is always going to disappoint; and doing exactly that was the core premise for Bounded Accuracy.

Casting, IMO, has hit a good balance between "Marvelous and effective" and "Not God Tier", while still giving good progression.

Maybe. My experience was casters seemed to be gimped at early levels, losing out on spells per day from high attribute and gaining a weak cantrip to compensate. At mid levels, the cantrip scaling basically invalidates most of your low level spell slots, so the Wizard puts all of those towards utility while still contributing At-Will damage comprable to the mundane classes, and having a few daily encounter ending nukes in his top couple spell levels. At high levels, it's more of the same except you get ridiculously few high level spells. But those few you do get are largely the same sort of game breaking crap you got in 3e at high levels, with old favorites like Gate, Wish, Astral Projection, and Time Stop making appearances for 9th level spells. Wish in particular still lets you break the game by giving you free magic items you can mass produce during downtime in a system where magic items are supposed to be entirely optional and rare.

Basically the magic system is still broken. The main difference is daily limits are more relevant in the extreme high end because your top level slots are 1 per spell level. On the other hands, you still have access to ways to break the game from these top level slots. Mid levels Wizards are really strong, having a wide utility base, with more top level slots available, but those top level slots aren't as game breaking, just encounter breaking. Low level Wizards are like the worst of AD&D, except they get to use a cantrip instead of a crossbow for their contributions.

You really can't take a system based upon a system that's broken for 30 years, determined to maintain everything that is iconic about it, and make it somehow not broken.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-12-29, 05:39 PM

I call foul on this one, Dice. You cut out the important context of the idea, here. It was that skills in next aren't relevant because "skill" is just "bonus to a specific application of an attribute roll", and you can attempt literally anything – and possibly achieve literally anything too, once the guidelines for difficulty are in place.

First off, I didn't take out the context, I specifically addressed the second part of the thought in a second quote block.

Secondly, that's still making an artificial distinction: Skills in 1e (such as they were), 2e, 3e, and 4e are all also "just a bonus to a specific application of an attribute roll" (and for that matter, so are attacks, saves, etc.), though the maginuted of the bonuses and which attribute rolls they applied to varied, and you can similarly attempt whatever you want with a skill check in all of those editions, subject to the DM allowing you to do so.

If you want to claim 5e skills are "irrelevant" because they're "just bonuses," then so are all other skill systems and complaining about other skill systems while lauding the (lack of) system in 5e is somewhat hypocritical, like claiming that certain things in 3e are doable because "the rules don't say I can't!" If you want to claim that pre-5e skill problems are important and noticeable problems, then the 5e skills problems are just as important and noticeable, because again, all D&D skill systems are "just bonuses." You can't have it both ways.

What does the 3e fighter have to do with this? He was talking about next specifically. This is disingenuous. I assume it's a misunderstanding of the idea?

Not at all; it was an analogy. He said "The character sheet doesn't tell you all that your character can do - How you play him and what you have him attempt tells you what he can do," emphasis mine, which is obviously false, as I pointed out.

If the set of things you can attempt and the set of things you can do are the same, then the legendarily-terrible 3e fighter wouldn't have any problems. If you need to track a dragon to its lair, just go ahead and do it by describing in detail how you do it; who cares if you don't have Track or any survival ranks? If you need to convince the duke to send his armies to your aid, just make a fancy speech; who cares if you have Cha 6 and no Diplomacy ranks?

Obviously you can attempt (and succeed at) plenty of things which are not directly enabled by hard-coded class features, but sticking your fingers in your ears and claiming that 5e's poor skill system doesn't matter because you can just do anything you try to do isn't at all productive.

But there is also no clear proof they were throwing things at a wall to see what sticks. The progression seemed to follow a clear path based on the nature of an open online playtest.

I disagree. The 4e skill challenge revisions, for example, followed a clear progression: "Here's a base system. People think it's too hard? Let's decrease the necessary successes. People think it's too easy? Let's increase the DCs. People think it doesn't encourage cooperation enough? Let's tweak the aid another rules. People think individual skills are too spammable? Let's change the penalties for secondary skills." And so forth.

They didn't try entirely different systems for each iteration of the process, drastically changing the number of skills available to each class, the type and breadth of skills available, the way the modifiers work, etc. like they did with the 5e skil system(s).

Scow2

2013-12-29, 05:48 PM

The math in 3e is based around a character of a given level having a ludicrously high bonus to a check. A fighter CAN'T do anything in 3.5 without spending skill points he doesn't have because most of the meaningful DCs start at 20.

In D&D Next, while the DMG offered incredibly broken guidelines on ability checks, the modules themselves were far more reasonable.

And no, NPCs DON'T make checks for routine things. In fact, most characters don't either: They flat-out can do it, either as a trait or as an inherent part of being who they are. Checks are for doing extraordinary things under pressure: If there's no reason not to be able to do something, you get it done.

Seerow

2013-12-29, 06:07 PM

The math in 3e is based around a character of a given level having a ludicrously high bonus to a check. A fighter CAN'T do anything in 3.5 without spending skill points he doesn't have because most of the meaningful DCs start at 20.

Actually the vast majority of DCs in 3.5 ranged between 15 and 30, with a few outliers in the 30-40 range. By comparison, DDN places DCs ranging between 10 and 30. With 30 being encompassed by things like "Break open a heavy door", "Climb an Oiled Rope", and "Swim out of a vortex". By comparison, climbing an Unknotted rope is DC15. Making it slippery is DC20. So a Fighter with +3 strength and 4 ranks in climb is going to succeed nearly as likely as not. Meanwhile in DDN the same level 1 fighter with climb trained can roll a natural 20 and a 6 on 1d6, and still get a 29, failing to climb the rope at all even with his perfect 1/120 roll.

There actually wasn't much in the way of "level appropriate" skill checks except for opposed checks (like stealth vs perception). This caused a lot of problems with the skill system, but resulted in the exact opposite of what you describe it as. (the net result was most skills becoming irrelevant at high levels because characters could accomplish almost everything except epic level skill checks easily)

As for untrained checks. Diplomacy to move an NPC from unfriendly to neutral, or neutral to friendly, is only DC15. A Fighter with no charisma or diplomacy can make that check reliably. Bluff is opposed. Stealth is opposed. So those he can succeed if his opponents are as unskilled as he is (chances are they are). If you want someone who can sneak passed a well trained sentry or guard beast with great perception modifiers, you want a rogue. But for general getting around and talking to people, the Fighter is just as competent as anyone else in 3.5. Characters with huge modifiers in those fields are the ones who are convincing Kingdoms to follow them with the sound of their voice, stealthing past dragons. You're right that the 3.5 never gets better at those things, but neither does the DDN Fighter. The DDN fighter being able to continue contributing because nobody else ever gets any better is not a sign of a strong system. It's the result of a non-system.

If I have a Fighter with 3 skill points per level, by level 5 he's got 24 skill points to play around with. He can have +4 to 6 different skills. Yes, it sounds horribly limiting, because it is. But yet it's still more flexible and makes the character more versatile than DDN's skill system. This is not a perk of 3.5, it's a flaw of DDN by somehow managing to be even worse than the least versatile class in the game and the poster boy for "Can't do crap out of combat".

So I'm curious, are you just unfamiliar with how the 3.5 skill DCs are actually set up, or are you using DCs significantly lower than what the game actually recommends and/or handwaving away checks where they really should be used?

And no, NPCs DON'T make checks for routine things. In fact, most characters don't either: They flat-out can do it, either as a trait or as an inherent part of being who they are. Checks are for doing extraordinary things under pressure: If there's no reason not to be able to do something, you get it done.

We're not talking about routine things. We're saying put the NPC into a situation where he's alongside the PCs, and he is every bit as likely to succeed as the highly trained and capable player characters, despite supposedly being very inferior to them. You really can't just handwave that away.

TuggyNE

2013-12-29, 06:09 PM

The math in 3e is based around a character of a given level having a ludicrously high bonus to a check. A fighter CAN'T do anything in 3.5 without spending skill points he doesn't have because most of the meaningful DCs start at 20.

Intimidate. Skill check sets level check DC; with e.g. Zhentarim sub levels, this can be made a fairly potent debuff.

Most other skills are problematic not because of lack of skill points, but because they're cross-class. For example, Spot and Listen (and Hide and Move Silently), as opposed checks, are usually fine.

And no, NPCs DON'T make checks for routine things. In fact, most characters don't either: They flat-out can do it, either as a trait or as an inherent part of being who they are. Checks are for doing extraordinary things under pressure: If there's no reason not to be able to do something, you get it done.

So, how does an exhibition sharpshooter fit into that? Are they an NPC? Clearly, the check is for an extraordinary thing done under pressure, but why are the results so terrible?

How about an expert rock climber, how do you know when they're under pressure or not — is it when they suddenly switch from smooth progress to falling every ten feet?

Talakeal

2013-12-29, 07:59 PM

Most races get +1 to two set attributes, and a handful of minor perks that may or may not come in handy. The human gets +1 to all attributes.

Is this correct? Are humans now actually the "master race", quick as an elf, tough as a dwarf, smart as a gnome, etc? That's really weird.

Scow2

2013-12-29, 08:03 PM

Talakeal

2013-12-29, 08:26 PM

Yes, and it's awesome. However, dwarves are either tougher or harder to hit (+1 HP/level, or +1 AC), among other bonuses. Elves get all sorts of cool bonuses. Humans are now good Generalists, while other races make better Specialists.

Its not a bad concept, but that's a very clunky way to handle it. Its really weird that they would have kept ability modifiers in the game at all then, I would think it would be easier to just give every race a few bonuses and then allow humans to choose their bonus from a list (similar to 3Es choice of bonus feat and skill).

Oracle_Hunter

2013-12-29, 08:31 PM

Its not a bad concept, but that's a very clunky way to handle it. Its really weird that they would have kept ability modifiers in the game at all then, I would think it would be easier to just give every race a few bonuses and then allow humans to choose their bonus from a list (similar to 3Es choice of bonus feat and skill).
In Gold & Glory every Race has Levels which grant the "special traits" associated with them. I'm not even bothering with stat modifiers for the reason you noticed: it's weird for the "nimble Elves" to actually look like "weaker, less charming Humans."

#ThereIsABetterWay

Scow2

2013-12-29, 08:31 PM

That makes humans better Specialists than Generalists.

Perseus

2013-12-29, 08:59 PM

Yes, and it's awesome. However, dwarves are either tougher or harder to hit (+1 HP/level, or +1 AC), among other bonuses. Elves get all sorts of cool bonuses. Humans are now good Generalists, while other races make better Specialists.

See I hate this. Having races be better at something, just because they exist, than another race who perhaps specialized in it, is a horrible way to make races.

It takes away some fantasy. Why can't my halfling be uber super strong and grapple a dragon with pure strength? The halfling who worked on a farm and whose day job has him hauling around a ton of armor, loot, and other stuff the squishes can't carry.

I think backgrounds and classes should be the only items that give your ability bonuses.

However they don't stack.

Background (Farm-Hand): Gain +1 Strength or +1 Constitution. Due to your body's overall health gain advantage on all physical (Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity saving throws). If you gain advantage on saving throws of these kind from a class then you gain a bonus to the roll (+whatever)

Fighter: Choose 1 of the following: +1 Strength, +1 Dex, or +1 Con. This doesn't stack with your background.

I know they had something like this but took it out, but this I believe would represent a character's ability score bonuses better.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-29, 09:22 PM

I always play a new edition in it's completed form before passing judgment, so while Next looks bad to me from the packets I will still play with an open mind.

That being said, without changes to the system my 5e game is already pre-Godwined with ze human ubermenschen. Since these are the branch of the human species that Commander Shepard came from.

SiuiS

2013-12-29, 09:36 PM

First off, I didn't take out the context, I specifically addressed the second part of the thought in a second quote block.

I feel from reading it that your separation of that one point into two doesn't work well. The critique of the two separate half points wouldn't hold against the whole point.he might still be wrong, I just feel that the method you hose to refute him didn't hold.

Secondly, that's still making an artificial distinction: Skills in 1e (such as they were), 2e, 3e, and 4e are all also "just a bonus to a specific application of an attribute roll" (and for that matter, so are attacks, saves, etc.)

Ah, no. The difference being, in games where that is not true, lack of proficiency means you cannot roll. Lack of skill proficiency means you cannot attempt; you auto fail.

Saving throws and attacks do fall under this, but that's because hitting is not an action which requires proficiency, and neither is having a metabolism :)

If you want to claim 5e skills are "irrelevant" because they're "just bonuses," then so are all other skill systems and complaining about other skill systems while lauding the (lack of) system in 5e is somewhat hypocritical, like claiming that certain things in 3e are doable because "the rules don't say I can't!" If you want to claim that pre-5e skill problems are important and noticeable problems, then the 5e skills problems are just as important and noticeable, because again, all D&D skill systems are "just bonuses." You can't have it both ways.

I disagree with the base premise. This only works if all systems are indeed identical and lack granularity. They are neither universally similar nor do they lack granularity.

Not at all; it was an analogy. He said "The character sheet doesn't tell you all that your character can do - How you play him and what you have him attempt tells you what he can do," emphasis mine, which is obviously false, as I pointed out.

Well, I don't see the inherent falsehood? It's not the best way to phrase it, but a character is more than the sum of their numbers and potential all statistical fallout. They are also application as dictated by meta conceits and design principles for personality.

I don't remember why this is at all relevant, though.

If the set of things you can attempt and the set of things you can do are the same, then the legendarily-terrible 3e fighter wouldn't have any problems.

But you're talking about how bad 3e fighter is to prove how bad 5e everything is. You've missed a transition somewhere.

In next, the things you can attempt and the things you can do match. The things you can do and the things you are guaranteed to succeed at don't, but that's a good thing based on the conceits of the game.

I disagree. The 4e skill challenge revisions, for example, followed a clear progression: "Here's a base system. People think it's too hard? Let's decrease the necessary successes. People think it's too easy? Let's increase the DCs. People think it doesn't encourage cooperation enough? Let's tweak the aid another rules. People think individual skills are too spammable? Let's change the penalties for secondary skills." And so forth.

They didn't try entirely different systems for each iteration of the process, drastically changing the number of skills available to each class, the type and breadth of skills available, the way the modifiers work, etc. like they did with the 5e skil system(s).

They weren't purposefully obfuscating the system with background noise either. That was in play, while making sales, when the sort of black box work can't be done.

They had a working model. Next says "do you think this is a working model?" Without any context to if is the sole model, their preferred model, if it uses the actual game math or a temporary substitute, etc.

The math in 3e is based around a character of a given level having a ludicrously high bonus to a check. A fighter CAN'T do anything in 3.5 without spending skill points he doesn't have because most of the meaningful DCs start at 20.

Hmm. This strikes me as brinksmanship. I'll have to dig out some books and check, I think. Viscerally, I want to say it doesn't hold. But I may just have internalized base skill optimisation.

Scow2

2013-12-29, 10:06 PM

It probably is brinksmanship, which is something I've been choked and stifled by in D&D 3.5 and Paizo Houserules. The radical distance between 3e's op floor and ceiling is extremely frustrating to deal with, especially with the CR system it's balanced around (To the point of XP being determined by your level vs. CR - which requires CR to be accurate).

See I hate this. Having races be better at something, just because they exist, than another race who perhaps specialized in it, is a horrible way to make races.

It takes away some fantasy. Why can't my halfling be uber super strong and grapple a dragon with pure strength? The halfling who worked on a farm and whose day job has him hauling around a ton of armor, loot, and other stuff the squishes can't carry.

I think backgrounds and classes should be the only items that give your ability bonuses.

However they don't stack.

Background (Farm-Hand): Gain +1 Strength or +1 Constitution. Due to your body's overall health gain advantage on all physical (Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity saving throws). If you gain advantage on saving throws of these kind from a class then you gain a bonus to the roll (+whatever)

Fighter: Choose 1 of the following: +1 Strength, +1 Dex, or +1 Con. This doesn't stack with your background.

I know they had something like this but took it out, but this I believe would represent a character's ability score bonuses better.And if there's no difference between races, there's no reason to even have races (Aside from cosmetic differences, but those don't require a space on a character sheet). Even then, the racial bonuses flavor a race without pushing it overwhelmingly in one direction or another... which kind of goes along with 5e's "Everyone's a slightly-specialized generalist" design.

I miss that classes don't give +1 to core attributes anymore. That was a cool rule to help starting characters.

TuggyNE

2013-12-29, 10:36 PM

Well, I don't see the inherent falsehood? It's not the best way to phrase it, but a character is more than the sum of their numbers and potential all statistical fallout. They are also application as dictated by meta conceits and design principles for personality.

The fallacy is "anything you can say you attempt, you can do", however difficult it might be to accomplish, and however poorly suited you might be to that. For example, if I were playing myself as a character, I could say "I attempt to climb the 5.12 rock wall", but I personally have no chance of succeeding at that, because I have no training in rock climbing and am not especially nimble, strong, or enduring.

SiuiS

2013-12-30, 02:18 AM

The fallacy is "anything you can say you attempt, you can do", however difficult it might be to accomplish, and however poorly suited you might be to that. For example, if I were playing myself as a character, I could say "I attempt to climb the 5.12 rock wall", but I personally have no chance of succeeding at that, because I have no training in rock climbing and am not especially nimble, strong, or enduring.

Okay. See, it looks like Scow said "something In Particular!" And the response is "that doesn't hold up in general!" And, well, yeah. But we aren't talking in general. Last I checked, Next was designed so that you could attempt anything without fear of utter failure and ridicule.

TuggyNE

2013-12-30, 02:54 AM

Last I checked, Next was designed so that you could attempt anything without fear of utter failure and ridicule.

And that design philosophy is somehow not inherently fallacious?

SiuiS

2013-12-30, 06:10 AM

And that design philosophy is somehow not inherently fallacious?

I don't believe so, no.

I know it's not always clear when I'm trying to be honest, open, and sans Internet attitude, but I am hoping that is coming across as my default state for this thread until I get snappy. As such;

No, I don't think there's anything inherently fallacious about a system designed to let anyone attempt anything if they have the narrative gravitas to do so, and find the numbers being low an easy thing to work with if the DCs for basic heroic actions are low-hanging fruit and you don't go the simulation it's route where everyone who e'er removes both feet from the ground is jumping, roll d20. Given that the system has worked in every iteration except for the DCs, which were ported over sloppily so that you could test the basic premise, I think the idea that this is somehow broken or guaranteed to suck is the fallacious stance.

And I know the math worked because I did all the math, albeit three or two packets ago. It is not unsalvagable, and it is not a waste of time. I think more time should have gone into what kind of system to use than on whether the numbers are exactly fine tuned, and I am very bitter at the testers as a whole, and a large number of people in this thread, who decried the terribleness of the mechanics and then started decrying the terribleness of the in originality when, under vocal pressure, WotC removed that "terrible" system and subbed in an older, proven one.

The key to making skills and attributes work is, like I said, narrative gravitas. That one idea changes everything about the system enough that it's far less broken. I would dearly love to see an argument against that other than taking it to an asinine extreme or ignoring it outright.

1337 b4k4

2013-12-30, 09:44 AM

The fallacy is "anything you can say you attempt, you can do", however difficult it might be to accomplish, and however poorly suited you might be to that. For example, if I were playing myself as a character, I could say "I attempt to climb the 5.12 rock wall", but I personally have no chance of succeeding at that, because I have no training in rock climbing and am not especially nimble, strong, or enduring.

You are also not an adventurer in a fantasy world full of dragons and monsters. If you were, then you might have such a chance, however small.

Seerow

2013-12-30, 11:17 AM

The key to making skills and attributes work is, like I said, narrative gravitas. That one idea changes everything about the system enough that it's far less broken. I would dearly love to see an argument against that other than taking it to an asinine extreme or ignoring it outright.

Narrative gravitas is not a system. It's not a design. You cannot hang an entire system on something as nebulously1 defined as "What I think I should be able to do".

Because at that point? Your system isn't fulfilling the goal of the system. A tabletop RPG system is created to provide a consistent game, where every player sitting around the table has a solid idea of what their characters are and are not capable of. That's what separates such a system from free-form roleplaying.

There are more narrative based systems, but even those tend to have a much more detailed system for skills/backgrounds/character identity than anything DDN has put forth. They also tend to get narrative points or some similar thing to influence the world around them doing stuff like "Oh that item showed up even though it wasn't there a minute ago!" or "I get to reroll that check I just failed".

In those systems you tend to lose the numbers entirely, but still get a much better idea of the things characters are good at, and more actual mechanics for manipulating the RNG to make sure the characters succeed when it's narratively important.

D&D lacks all of that entirely. If the goal is to be a narratively driven game, it fails just as badly as if it's attempting to be any other type of game. Because its system is a handful of nonrules on top of a watered down 3.X chasis.

And I know the math worked because I did all the math, albeit three or two packets ago. It is not unsalvagable, and it is not a waste of time. I think more time should have gone into what kind of system to use than on whether the numbers are exactly fine tuned, and I am very bitter at the testers as a whole, and a large number of people in this thread, who decried the terribleness of the mechanics and then started decrying the terribleness of the in originality when, under vocal pressure, WotC removed that "terrible" system and subbed in an older, proven one.

Which system of theirs are you talking about that was original and had math that actually worked?

I remember decrying them removing elements that were interesting, but those weren't elements I ever claimed didn't work. The one aspect of the game I have consistently decried is Bounded Accuracy, and that is a point the developers have stuck to their guns to on from day one.

And due to that bounded accuracy, we haven't seen a single iteration of skills that actually works. Nor have we seen them at any point backtrack away from the crappy skill system in favor of something that did work in the past.

You are also not an adventurer in a fantasy world full of dragons and monsters. If you were, then you might have such a chance, however small.

"however small" = ~25%? Because that's your baseline chance for an average person with no training and no strength bonus succeeding at a climb check. That's a huge deal compared to "I shouldn't be able to do this at all".

1337 b4k4

2013-12-30, 11:50 AM

Narrative gravitas is not a system. It's not a design. You cannot hang an entire system on something as nebulously1 defined as "What I think I should be able to do".

I'm fairly certain there are more than a handful of systems which do exactly that. Dungeon World comes to mind.

"however small" = ~25%? Because that's your baseline chance for an average person with no training and no strength bonus succeeding at a climb check. That's a huge deal compared to "I shouldn't be able to do this at all".

Where do you get 25%? Using DCs in the DM Guides, the DC of a 5.12 climb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System) would fall somewhere between DC 20 and DC 30 (http://www.spadout.com/wiki/index.php/Climbing_Grades)(depending on whether the climb is composed entirely of 5.12 maneuvers or one such maneuver in a generally easier climb). That gives your baseline, average person with no training and no strength bonus at best a 5% chance of success and no chance otherwise, and even then that's only if you use a single roll to represent the entirety of the climb.

Seerow

2013-12-30, 12:09 PM

I'm fairly certain there are more than a handful of systems which do exactly that. Dungeon World comes to mind.

I'm not familiar with Dungeon World, but looking at its SRD briefly I see things like the Bard having a class feature saying "You're good at knowing stuff. You encounter something, ask the DM a question about it, he answers that truthfully", "You're good at talking to people, when speaking to someone ask them a question. They must answer it truthfully".

Those sorts of things outright saying "You auto succeed at this thing you're good at", with those things being clearly defined, is one of the things you can expect out of a narrative system. Saying "You auto succeed until the DM disagrees" is just asking for table drama. Especially when D&D does have roots in forcing players to roll for everything. (Seriously I've seen DMs, experienced players who have been in the game since before I was born, who refuse to allow taking 10 in 3.5. These people would insist on every check being rolled, ESPECIALLY since there's such a high chance of failure).

Where do you get 25%? Using DCs in the DM Guides, the DC of a 5.12 climb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System) would fall somewhere between DC 20 and DC 30 (http://www.spadout.com/wiki/index.php/Climbing_Grades)(depending on whether the climb is composed entirely of 5.12 maneuvers or one such maneuver in a generally easier climb). That gives your baseline, average person with no training and no strength bonus at best a 5% chance of success and no chance otherwise, and even then that's only if you use a single roll to represent the entirety of the climb.

You're right. I'm not a mountain climber and had no idea what the notation meant, I assumed a typical rock wall. Given a Sheer Cliff that makes it DC20, reducing that chance for the typical person to 5% (which is still a really high chance for something that shouldn't be possible at all). On the other hand, it means the expert rock climber (high skill, average attribute) is succeeding about 37% of the time, and the best in the world (high skill, max attribute) is succeeding 62% of the time.

While it's a difficult climb, isn't it something that regular people are actually capable of doing reliably? Or do people who are capable of completing this regularly fail around half the time? What about for harder climbs (I noticed the chart indicating a number of difficulties above the 5.12)?

Scow2

2013-12-30, 12:11 PM

"however small" = ~25%? Because that's your baseline chance for an average person with no training and no strength bonus succeeding at a climb check. That's a huge deal compared to "I shouldn't be able to do this at all".Where are you getting a DC 15 from? The buggy, sloppily-ported guideline in the DMG doesn't count.

Actually, the chance is smaller than 25%, unless everyone you meet is compelled to try to climb every wall they come across. The chance of accomplishing a task is calculated by the (uncontrolled) chance of attempting an action, and then a fixed percent chance of following through on it.

The d20 gives more 'believable' results if you replace it with 3d6. However, that leads to things being too predictable. The d20 is designed to amplify success chances for dramatic and heroic reasons, and failure chances to empower the underdog.

DC 15 is right for a 5.12 climbing grade (Remember - the numbers given in the Dungeon Master's Guidelines are acknowledged as buggy and incorrect, and will not be used in the final game. They were a sloppy holdover from previous editions.) In D&D Next, there shouldn't be any DCs greater than 25, and no DCs in the realm of mortal possibility above 20.

While it's a difficult climb, isn't it something that regular people are actually capable of doing reliably? Or do people who are capable of completing this regularly fail around half the time? What about for harder climbs (I noticed the chart indicating a number of difficulties above the 5.12)?Actually, if this information's correct, then it is DC 15... and yes, real rock-climbers DO fail to perform the climb on the first attempt about half the time. That's why you need safety gear (Not only giving a bonus on the check, but also granting advantage, and negating the penalty for failure)

Seerow

2013-12-30, 12:17 PM

Where are you getting a DC 15 from? The buggy, sloppily-ported guideline in the DMG doesn't count.

As already discussed above, even by those guidelines the actual numbers were at least DC20, as the specified climb would be a sheer climb with few handholds, as opposed to a typical rock wall.

But seriously, if you're not going to take DCs from the goddamn rules where do you want to take the DCs from? Seriously, you can't say the system works just fine as long as you ignore every guideline the developers hand to you. And no, you can't point to adventure paths as a better source, because those impact nothing outside the path themselves, and are simply not going to be read by the vast majority of people playing.

Actually, the chance is smaller than 25%, unless everyone you meet is compelled to try to climb every wall they come across. The chance of accomplishing a task is calculated by the (uncontrolled) chance of attempting an action, and then a fixed percent chance of following through on it.

What does this even mean? I've tried rereading this bit a few times and have no idea what you're trying to convey.

The d20 gives more 'believable' results if you replace it with 3d6. However, that leads to things being too predictable. The d20 is designed to amplify success chances for dramatic and heroic reasons, and failure chances to empower the underdog.

Personally I'm a fan of 3d20 take middle. Such a system also plays nice with DDN's advantage/disadvantage. But that really has no bearing on what DDN is actually doing.

Actually, if this information's correct, then it is DC 20... and yes, real rock-climbers DO fail to perform the climb on the first attempt about half the time. That's why you need safety gear (Not only giving a bonus on the check, but also granting advantage, and negating the penalty for failure)

Not asking about the first time. A climber's first time doing a 5.12 or whatever, sure. That's hard and they've got a good shot at failing.

We're talking about an experienced climber who has hit up every 5.12 climb they've been able to find, and hit up several tougher ones as well. When they find a new 5.12 they haven't done before, are they still going to fail half the time, despite having done harder climbs? What if they come back to one they've done in the past? Are they going to fail that?

Scow2

2013-12-30, 12:21 PM

As already discussed above, even by those guidelines the actual numbers were at least DC20, as the specified climb would be a sheer climb with few handholds, as opposed to a typical rock wall.

But seriously, if you're not going to take DCs from the goddamn rules where do you want to take the DCs from? Seriously, you can't say the system works just fine as long as you ignore every guideline the developers hand to you. And no, you can't point to adventure paths as a better source, because those impact nothing outside the path themselves, and are simply not going to be read by the vast majority of people playing.You take them from the guidelines and understanding of the d20's curve. You can also use the ones in the modules. There are NO RULES in the Dungeon Master Guideline packet, just a few loose guidelines. Treating them as gospel is not fair to the system.

We're talking about an experienced climber who has hit up every 5.12 climb they've been able to find, and hit up several tougher ones as well. When they find a new 5.12 they haven't done before, are they still going to fail half the time, despite having done harder climbs? What if they come back to one they've done in the past? Are they going to fail that?Keep in mind that "Failure" means "Doesn't make the climb in less than 6 seconds"

Also, you're getting double your proficiency bonus to the climb - one for training in Athletics, and one for proficiency with Climbing Kits. And, if you're a rogue or other expert that's focused on climbing as a shtick, you get a further +5 on top of that.

Depending on HOW experienced the climber is, though, it's rote. No need to roll at all, any more than you need to make a DEX check to walk across a room.

Seerow

2013-12-30, 12:52 PM

You take them from the guidelines and understanding of the d20's curve. You can also use the ones in the modules. There are NO RULES in the Dungeon Master Guideline packet, just a few loose guidelines. Treating them as gospel is not fair to the system.

Those loose guidelines are the extent of the rules we have been given. They are all we have to judge the system by. You can say just wing it, but the majority of DMs aren't going to be comfortable with that. Instead they're going to look to the guidelines, say "Okay that looks like it's roughly DC20" and leave it at that.

Remember, this exact same problem of poorly thought out guidelines being given as rules is what caused all the crying about wooden doors becoming harder to break as you level up in 4e. It doesn't matter that that doesn't make sense, or that there's legitimate rules arguments to the contrary, people look to the guidelines, see what the DC should be, and use that!

It doesn't matter that you personally would set the DC for X as DC 5, because everyone should be able to do it, if there's something similar in the guidelines that says it should be DC15, that's what the majority of gamers are going to experience, and that is going to turn them off to the game. And when you say it works just fine for you, it worked just fine because the game you were playing was effectively completely different from anyone playing by the rules in the game.

Keep in mind that "Failure" means "Doesn't make the climb in less than 6 seconds"

That's funny, where do you see in the rules that a climb check only takes 6 seconds on a success? Actually there's nothing in there about the penalty for failure either. Which is funny because these non-rules again lead to one of a few situations:

1) The DM rules that the climber makes a check every round of climbing, moving up with a successful check.
1a) The DM rules that if you fail the climb check, you fall to the ground. Climbing is now extremely deadly even for a level 20 expert.
1b) The DM rules that if you fail the climb check, you fall as far as you would normally climb up. Now the level 20 expert never reaches the top of a tough climb because he's falling down as often as he gets up.
1c) The DM rules that if you fail the climb check, nothing happens. Now the commoner can get up the cliff no trouble at all given enough time.
1d) The DM rules 1a) or 1b) happens, but only if you fail by X or more. This favors the expert some, and is probably the best case scenario for the system working.

2) The DM rules as you've said here that success means you climbed the wall in 6 seconds.
2a) The DM rules if you fail the climb check, you fail to climb it. Try again next round. We're back to commoners climbing everything given some time.
2b) The DM rules if you fail the climb check, you got partway up, then fell. Take some falling damage, try again next round. And here we're back to climbing being downright deadly no matter how good you are, to the point where even the expert won't bother risking it.

Interestingly this is 6 completely different scenarios, all plausible within the guidelines we're given, and will produce 6 completely different game experiences. Which goes back to my initial complaint that such poorly defined skills make it impossible to know what your character is good at or capable of. I've played in games where to know what I'm capable of I had to try to read the GM's mind. Some other players (particularly those who had been with said GM for years and knew how he thought) loved it, but it was honestly the worst gaming experience I ever had.

Having an entire system relying on that sort of crap as your fundamental premise, the foundation in which the game is built upon and encouraging it? That isn't going to make for a good game. It might work for specific groups with a dynamic such that everyone is on exactly the same page and generally agrees on what various characters should be able to do. But in my experience a group with that kind of cohesion is extremely rare. Even people I have gamed with for years and am good friends with can have dramatically different opinions on such things from me. This is why we sit down to a game with a set rules system, so we can all agree on what the characters can do by the rules, and tell our stories and have our adventures within those constraints. Taking away those constraints leads to nothing but bickering over peoples differing images of what a given character should and should not be capable of.

Let's take a different approach to this issue.

Imagine if instead of skills, this sort of laissez-faire style of design was applied to spellcasting. You have one player coming in imagining his Wizard capable of what a 3.5 wizard is capable of. You have another player coming in imagining that a Wizard is something closer to a movie-style caster, who can throw bolts of force around and have some telekenisis, but not much else. Then you have the DM coming in imagining that Wizards are closer to Gandalf, using almost no overt magic and generally staying out of the way, with his main use being knowing a lot of things and having an occasional utility.

Now how do these three people sit around a table to play a game? What happens the first time that Wizard tries to cast color spray and the other two cry foul? When he does an illusion, and the DM thinks that's fitting but the other player argues Wizards don't do that, that's a psionic thing?

Basically having complete non-rules leads to a bunch of arguing at the table over what the characters should be able to do. If only the DM gets a say, then the player who picked his character expecting to do one thing, only to find out that doesn't work in this game, is going to be very put out. If the player gets his way though, it could end up very imbalanced, and annoy the other people at the table.

The only difference between the need for a good spellcasting system and a good skill system is the skill system has a basis in the real world. But that's not a good enough reason to get rid of rules relating to it. Because as the discussion around climbing has demonstrated, we aren't expert rock climbers, most of us are only tangently aware of it existing as a thing at all. Who am I to say what an expert rock climber is capable of? I can tell you how good I would be at rock climbing (read: Not able to climb a regular rock wall, let alone a serious challenge), but beyond that?

I'm not in any position to on the fly tell you what the DC of a sheer cliff face is, or how much more difficult that is from it being in the middle of the windy canyon, or while it's raining. Throw in modifiers for "Rocs are attacking you while you climb", and I'm lost. But the game should be able to adjudicate such things for me. Just like the game adjudicates what a spellcaster is and is not capable of casting at any given level.

1337 b4k4

2013-12-30, 01:31 PM

I'm not familiar with Dungeon World, but looking at its SRD briefly I see things like the Bard having a class feature saying "You're good at knowing stuff. You encounter something, ask the DM a question about it, he answers that truthfully", "You're good at talking to people, when speaking to someone ask them a question. They must answer it truthfully".

Those sorts of things outright saying "You auto succeed at this thing you're good at", with those things being clearly defined, is one of the things you can expect out of a narrative system. Saying "You auto succeed until the DM disagrees" is just asking for table drama.

Except that is implicit even in the Dungeon World example. Note last part about the DM asking you where you encountered that information. Sure it's a world building mechanic, but it's also a check on your bard, they need to be able to justify their knowledge. Also note the qualifier that the item in question needs to be "important" guess who defines that? Of course, if you're playing the game in a cooperative manner as adults often do, this isn't a problem and when expectations aren't met, you discuss, rule and move on. Games in which more than one person are involved and one or more of those people have narrative / situational control will always have conflicts of expectations.

Especially when D&D does have roots in forcing players to roll for everything. (Seriously I've seen DMs, experienced players who have been in the game since before I was born, who refuse to allow taking 10 in 3.5. These people would insist on every check being rolled, ESPECIALLY since there's such a high chance of failure).

Great, you've seen crappy DMs. You don't design games from crappy DMs any more than you design games for crappy players. Also, citation on the "roll for everything", because I seem to recall most editions admonishing the DM not to over use the dice and advising DMs that they always have the final say. Certainly as the years went on and D&D became more about the math game than the exploration game, culminating in 3.5, rolling the dice for everything became more entrenched, but I don't think it's fair to say that D&D has roots in that.

You're right. I'm not a mountain climber and had no idea what the notation meant, I assumed a typical rock wall. Given a Sheer Cliff that makes it DC20, reducing that chance for the typical person to 5% (which is still a really high chance for something that shouldn't be possible at all). On the other hand, it means the expert rock climber (high skill, average attribute) is succeeding about 37% of the time, and the best in the world (high skill, max attribute) is succeeding 62% of the time.

While it's a difficult climb, isn't it something that regular people are actually capable of doing reliably? Or do people who are capable of completing this regularly fail around half the time? What about for harder climbs (I noticed the chart indicating a number of difficulties above the 5.12)?

Again, you're substituting a single check for a complex action. This is the equivalent of turning D&D combat into a single die roll to see who wins. But ignoring that let's look at your experienced climber, and let's go with a DC 25:

Let's assume a rogue of decent natural talent, so STR 14 giving us a +2 naturally, at level 1 we get +1 proficiency bonus, and +5 for expertise. All told, +8, giving the thief a 20% chance of success compared to the commoner's 5%. As Scow points out, if you have a climbers kit and the relevant proficiency, and choose that for another expertise bonus, you have another +6 (+1 for proficiency at level 1, +5 for expertise) giving you an even 50% chance of success.

At level 10, if you've dumped 2 ability score improvements into STR, you're now at +3 from ability, +3 level proficiency, +5 expertise, giving you 35% without equipment. Again if you take the equipment, you get an additional +8 for a 75% chance.

By level 11, you've gained reliable talent. Auto take 10 on any check which you gain proficiency bonuses for, meaning without equipment you succeed 70% of the time and with equipment you can't fail at all.

Seerow

2013-12-30, 01:41 PM

Again, you're substituting a single check for a complex action. This is the equivalent of turning D&D combat into a single die roll to see who wins. But ignoring that let's look at your experienced climber, and let's go with a DC 25:

Let's assume a rogue of decent natural talent, so STR 14 giving us a +2 naturally, at level 1 we get +1 proficiency bonus, and +5 for expertise. All told, +8, giving the thief a 20% chance of success compared to the commoner's 5%. As Scow points out, if you have a climbers kit and the relevant proficiency, and choose that for another expertise bonus, you have another +6 (+1 for proficiency at level 1, +5 for expertise) giving you an even 50% chance of success.

At level 10, if you've dumped 2 ability score improvements into STR, you're now at +3 from ability, +3 level proficiency, +5 expertise, giving you 35% without equipment. Again if you take the equipment, you get an additional +8 for a 75% chance.

By level 11, you've gained reliable talent. Auto take 10 on any check which you gain proficiency bonuses for, meaning without equipment you succeed 70% of the time and with equipment you can't fail at all.

Since when does any rogue invest into strength? If you look at any character who would actually use strength, you lose that expertise bonus and the reliable talent, chucking your numbers across the board into unusable territory. Or if your rogue is using one of his skills on climbing, he's almost certainly not starting with 14 strength, and definitely not wasting stat bumps/feats on it. I guess just for the purpose of determining "Best in the world", it fits. But such a character would probably never see actual play, there's too much incentive to be dex based.

And besides that, it looks like more of your bonus is coming from equipment than anything else before level 11. +8 from gear vs +3 skill, +3 attribute, and +5 expertise, your gear is the biggest individual modifier and bigger than skill and attribute combined.

I'm also kind of curious how taking 10 gives you a 70% success rate. Either you couldn't succeed on a 10 (in which case it doesn't help you at all), or you could succeed on a 10 (in which case your success rate is up to 100%).

Great, you've seen crappy DMs. You don't design games from crappy DMs any more than you design games for crappy players. Also, citation on the "roll for everything", because I seem to recall most editions admonishing the DM not to over use the dice and advising DMs that they always have the final say. Certainly as the years went on and D&D became more about the math game than the exploration game, culminating in 3.5, rolling the dice for everything became more entrenched, but I don't think it's fair to say that D&D has roots in that.

I'd have to search through books, but my experience is that AD&D players tend to be more along the lines of "let the dice fall where they may" and really dislike the idea of a character being able to break the RNG and succeed at anything without rolling. I think it comes from a lot of the way AD&D was set up where you had the long charts showing what you had to roll for various tasks. For example you never got a rogue with 100% chance to do anything. Your THAC0 and Saves progressed in such a way that you might be able to succeed on a 2, but you could never just avoid rolling. In the older editions the idea of taking an average was basically unheard of, and I've run into a lot of older players who outright refuse the idea.

Either way, the point wasn't to design for crappy DMs (as pointed out these DMs were refusing to allow taking 10 even when the rules explicitly tell you when it is appropriate to do so), it is to point out that not having mechanics telling you what is appropriate to auto succeed at simply encourages a bad play style. Right now there are people who prefer rolling for everything. Tell them "Only roll when you feel is appropriate" is going to make them feel that rolling for everything is exactly the way it should be, and then people get frustrated when the skill math doesn't work and their characters are failing more often than not at things that should be trivial past the earliest levels.

SiuiS

2013-12-30, 01:53 PM

Narrative gravitas is not a system. It's not a design. You cannot hang an entire system on something as nebulously1 defined as "What I think I should be able to do".

Because at that point? Your system isn't fulfilling the goal of the system. A tabletop RPG system is created to provide a consistent game, where every player sitting around the table has a solid idea of what their characters are and are not capable of. That's what separates such a system from free-form roleplaying.

You'll note that I didn't say hang a system on what I think I should be able to do, slugger. I said narrative gravitas.

If you have a dragon wth impenetrable armor, and you walk up and sword at it, you're wasting your time. If you use the game to set up the sword roll as meaningful – say, you position yourself, wait for a strafe and aim for a visible weak spot – then you get to roll an attack. Before that, the answer to "I attack it" is no.

That works for DDN just fine. Does the party barbarian win arm wrestling with peasants? Yes. How about when he insults their mother? Yes. How about when he roles everyone up and the biggest, strongest farmer's hand rolls up to put him in his place? No, because that's obviously more important to the game than rolling because there is a die in front of you and you have hands.

Many games work on this model explicitly. Many work on it implicitly. It functions. Arguments that it doesn't work or it shouldn't be used are wrong and need to be validated, respectively.

Which system of theirs are you talking about that was original and had math that actually worked?

The one with skill dice and the one immediately after that.

And due to that bounded accuracy, we haven't seen a single iteration of skills that actually works. Nor have we seen them at any point backtrack away from the crappy skill system in favor of something that did work in the past.

Bust out the mathematical proof then. I did.

Scow2

2013-12-30, 01:55 PM

That +8 isn't from the gear itself - it's from the skill with the gear. Even the best mountain climbers aren't climbing 5.12 cliffs without proper climbing gear.

Most rogues will not have a strength bonus (Or might have a +1)... but taking Expertise (Climbing Equipment) is not absurd for a second-story burglar, nor is Expertise (Athletics) for any urban rogue.

Most characters don't need this level of dedication to climb - it's only important if you're in a hurry. Most climb checks are used to avoid Bad Stuff from being attacked while climbing.

That's funny, where do you see in the rules that a climb check only takes 6 seconds on a success? Actually there's nothing in there about the penalty for failure either. Which is funny because these non-rules again lead to one of a few situations:It's only 6 seconds because a turn is only 6 seconds, and this is either Movement or An Action. No rules on failure means just that - nothing happens. You fail to climb. You don't fall, you don't lose your progress. You just don't go up.

Seerow

2013-12-30, 02:16 PM

The one with skill dice and the one immediately after that.

The one with skill dice is the one I've been mostly discussing, because that's the one I'm familiar with. The one immediately after that was one with no skills at all except knowledge. Judging by Scow's posts there has been another one in a packet since then that changed the skill dice from +1dx to +x, which seems to be what you're upset about.

But the skill dice in of themselves weren't enough. Not with only going from 1d6 to 1d12. The difference between the best skill and worst in the world is only 3 average points? I did like that it introduced a bit more of a long tail (so you could have thingsl ike a commoner with a 1/120 chance of success at something, as opposed to 1/20 being the lowest chance), but with such a narrow range that longer tail didn't make a significant difference.

And to be clear, them abandoning the skill dice in favor of +x bonuses, which (again judging by Scow because I never got that last packet) run from +1 to +3 over 10 levels isn't what anybody who complained about skill dice wanted. Blaming the playtesters who didn't like such a narrow range of skills for WotC abandoning a new system in favor of a different system with a similarly narrow range of skills is seriously misplaced blame. Skill dice could have worked if it was something like +1d6 each time you gained a new rank.

In fact, given a system where every level the character gained 1d6 skill die which could go to either a new skill, or improving an old skill (with a cap on how high you could raise a single skill, increasing with level), would have kept the core of the skill dice (giving that long tail, and a more average weighted roll, and getting a tactile appreciation for being better as you improve) while giving a level of granularity that I could have been happy with.

But that's not what they went with. They also didn't just revert to 3.x or 4e systems. Instead they doubled down on bounded accuracy again and gave us the worst of both worlds. No bonus dice, but still get stuck with miniscule bonuses that don't meaningfully improve your odds of success. Don't blame me or any other playtester for that. That's all on the designers.

Bust out the mathematical proof then. I did.

I never saw your proof, so I'm not sure what it is I'm expected to discredit.

The problem with the system is that character levels factor almost nothing into it. You go from being above average trained guy, to god slaying guy, and in that time, you're still doing the same things, only slightly more frequently.

A character with a 5 attribute and a maxed out skill die gets a 85% chance at DC15, 62% chance at DC20, a 35% chance at DC25, and 15% at DC30.

A level 1 character with a lower primary stat and only a d6 skill die gets a 68% chance at DC 15, 42% chance at DC20, a 17% chance at DC25, and 1% at DC30.

A level 1 character with no training and no primary stat gets a 30% chance at DC15, 5% chance at DC20, and cannot attempt DC25 or DC30.

Basically, you get a stat and some skill training, and you're good to go. You're never actually going to get better at that skill over the course of your career unless you waste feats on attribute boosts. The only way to gain versatility in your available skills is to give up an increased die for all skills to gain 1 extra skill. There is at no point any way to create a challenge designed for a high level character that you can expect him to overcome, that a trained low level character cannot also overcome. That is the fundamental problem, and the only arguments against that I've seen are "I don't care, it's not a problem to me".

Seerow

2013-12-30, 02:17 PM

It's only 6 seconds because a turn is only 6 seconds, and this is either Movement or An Action. No rules on failure means just that - nothing happens. You fail to climb. You don't fall, you don't lose your progress. You just don't go up.

So your ruling has just hit situation 2a), and an untrained commoner is climbing all but the toughest cliffs with no need to worry about anything ever. This is one of the 6 reasonable interpretations I laid out, but other games will play dramatically differently because there are no ****ing rules in the game.

Scow2

2013-12-30, 02:30 PM

So your ruling has just hit situation 2a), and an untrained commoner is climbing all but the toughest cliffs with no need to worry about anything ever. This is one of the 6 reasonable interpretations I laid out, but other games will play dramatically differently because there are no ****ing rules in the game.Well, there are guidelines about having to force a DC 5 check to not fall if provoked by something.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-30, 02:58 PM

I never saw your proof, so I'm not sure what it is I'm expected to discredit.
Clearly you need to claim that you ran the numbers a few packets ago. That's all that's needed!

Pex

2013-12-30, 04:12 PM

Scow2 is the first person in this thread who has, as someone who had no access to actual packets, has actually said something I can understand with backup. Indeed, enough for me to actually become excited for the game, while previously I was doubtful because people said it was crap without really giving much reason and shouted down people who said it could be ok without giving any more reason.

Where as Kurald and Seerow have enlightened me on knowing that 5E would not offer incentive to switch from Pathfinder. As Scow2 continues to put on the hate of Pathfinder of which whatever he does not like about the game I do like or at worse am indifferent, his personal preferences of gaming tastes are shown to be opposite of mine, having me be less inclined to switch.

I remember well the 2E days of the DM having to fiat everything to determine whether my character could do something or not, and when he couldn't decide just had me roll an ability check but always at some -#. I do not want to go back to those days.

TuggyNE

2013-12-30, 07:32 PM

You'll note that I didn't say hang a system on what I think I should be able to do, slugger. I said narrative gravitas.

If you have a dragon wth impenetrable armor, and you walk up and sword at it, you're wasting your time. If you use the game to set up the sword roll as meaningful – say, you position yourself, wait for a strafe and aim for a visible weak spot – then you get to roll an attack. Before that, the answer to "I attack it" is no.
[…]
Bust out the mathematical proof then. I did.

Am I the only one that finds this bizarrely inconsistent? If the system works off narrative gravitas, math only gets in the way, as evidenced by all the protests that correct math is unnecessary when you have n.g. But if that's the case, then throw out all the math, all of it, and don't try to "mathematically prove" that the system works: you already said "math is unimportant, we got fiat here". Put your dice where your mouth is.

The specific example of the dragon is also awkward. How do you know where the visible weak spot is? Do you just say, "I aim for a visible weak spot"? If so, why do you have to actually say that every time to have a chance of success, why wouldn't your character, y'know, use standard operating procedure and aim for visible weak spots? To put it another way, why do you have to play "guess the right metagame sequence of things to say in order to jump through all the right hoops and get your character to do their job with some sort of basic competence" every time you do anything? It's like old-school trapfinding all over again. "I poke around with a pole. I shove magnets down the pathway, stacking for various weights. I pour a bit of water over and look for pooling or leaks." "Ohoho, you forgot to say you were testing with a torch, so the non-magical heat sensor triggered the trap when you went by."

I want my in-character decisions to be meaningful, not busywork. "You must remember X amount of random boilerplate to ride" is not my idea of a good game. If that is D&DN, take it away, I don't want it.

Whiteagle

2013-12-30, 07:45 PM

... Yeah, sorry, that argument makes no sense. I have just as much right to be interested in DND next now even if I hadn't been following it earlier. And as such, I (and I imagine the vast majority of the market) must create my opinion of the game on 3rd party arguments.
Indeed, but damn you if you don't like [INSERT EDITION HERE] because you're just parroting hearsay from the OTHER Edition's Gonards!

Skills: This is the big thing Scow seems to like, for reasons I am incapable of comprehending. Skills are now primarily based off your attributes. Your attributes are now capped at 20, and most likely you're stuck at 16 unless you want to spend feats improving the attribute. This may be a worthwhile option early in the edition, as feat options continue to be printed, I don't expect anyone will ever actually max out attributes over actually getting anything interesting.

But anyway, it's hard to tell what to actually like about skills themselves, because as has been noted they changed frequently. In fact, in the last packet I downloaded (middle of August), Skills had been removed entirely in favor of Backgrounds and Lore. So skills as we tend to think of them (being used for social interactions, stealth, exploration) are all gone. Instead the only skills you get are Knowledge based skills (any knowledge skill you have from background you get +10 on) and "traits", which are a simple benefit you get from your background such as "I can craft mundane weapons and armor" or "I have a fake ID".

I assume at least one new packet came out since then with a new iteration, since Scow was talking about getting to train 3 skills from background and 1 skill from class. This sounds a lot like the skill system that was used between March and June, where you picked 4 skills to train at character creation. You then get to add a skill die to any skill you have trained (+1d6). As you level up, this gets as high as 1d12 by level 17. You can choose to forgoe increasing your skill die in favor of gaining a new skill. Over the course of 20 levels you could end up with 7 skills with +1d6, or 4 skills with +1d12. Assuming averages and even giving the benefit of rounding up, that's at most effectively 28 skill ranks, with a maximum cap of 7 skill ranks. Combine this with the low attribute caps, and you have a system where characters don't actually get meaningfully better at using skills they're trained in, going from an average roll of 16 at level 1 for a trained skill with a good stat to an average roll of 21 for a 1d12 trained skill with a capped stat.

The argument made here is that the system is better because nobody ever becomes obsoleted, and everyone can contribute. And while this is ostensibly true, the fact is it also means that nobody is ever really good enough at anything to reliably succeed at what should be an easy task. Additionally, there is never a challenge so difficult that you actually need someone with training to succeed at it. You can say that this makes the Fighter more heroic because he can contribute to more situations... but the same is true of Bob Joe the Commoner who can contribute at an effectiveness that is frankly absurd when you consider what the RNG and basic attributes allow him to obtain compared to professional adventurers.

Yeah, you clearly ARE out of date on your info, since the September Packet brought with it Level based Proficiency Bonus Progression.
Now you get the same Bonus to add to rolls in everything you are "Proficient" with, Attack Rolls, Skill Rolls, Ect.
This bonus gradually increases depending on your TOTAL Level, topping out at a +6 at Level 19.

So NPCs never have to make a check? If you have a commoner he automatically fails at everything? Takes massive penalties to his rolls? What? I've never seen anything like that in any iteration of the playtest. There was never anything to indicate only PCs make ability checks.

And of course if you give PCs a +X awesome bonus, or negate the -X Not A PC Penalty, then you run into the problem of...
Because NPC probably don't get the +1 to +6 Proficiency Bonus...

Because in either case the Paladin is only 4-5 points behind the thief at thiefing. Except it's worse in DDN because attributes are more closely limited. So where before a Paladin with 12 dex vs a Rogue with 30 dex was totally possible, now you've got a Paladin with 10 dex vs a Rogue with 20. So the Paladin is comparatively better at thiefing than the 4e paladin. If the goal was to fix that issue, then the system has failed at that pretty spectacularly.
...And nether will the Paladin, unless he's Proficient in Slight of Hand, Stealth, and Deception...

The problem is that the human limits being set by DDN don't even fill basic human competency. When you have the absolute best character in the world capable of regularly failing a check that we see happening in real life with regularity, that's a serious issue. If I can watch Top Shot and see real life marksmen doing crazy trick shots with 30-50% accuracy, and see a top tier character in DDN capable of such a thing maybe 5% of the time, I'm going to have problems with it. By the same token, if I see that top end character capable of doing it 50% of the time, but the guy with no training in that area at all can do it 10-15% of the time (which is what happens in bounded accuracy), I'm also going to have trouble with accepting that. Because I know if you handed me a gun, I could barely hit a target 20ft in front of me with no negative modifiers at all. Much less even attempt any of those trick shots.
And AGAIN, you are using out of date info...
Highest DC is 35; Nearly Impossible, so challenging that only Demigods and their ilk can succeed without assistance.
A PC can have: +5 from the relevant Ability Modifier, +6 from having Proficiency in that particular Skill, and an additional +5 for having Expertise with said Skill.
Fully Optimized, your Character has a ten percent chance of success at the things GODSPAWN can do!

At high levels, it's more of the same except you get ridiculously few high level spells. But those few you do get are largely the same sort of game breaking crap you got in 3e at high levels, with old favorites like Gate, Wish, Astral Projection, and Time Stop making appearances for 9th level spells. Wish in particular still lets you break the game by giving you free magic items you can mass produce during downtime in a system where magic items are supposed to be entirely optional and rare.
Uh, have you READ the new descriptions for these Spells?

Wish practically leaves you bed-ridden for a week when not used to replicate an 8th level spell's effects.

Time Stop only give you a maximum of five rounds, and if you so much as TOUCH anything else it immediately ends.

Gate requires Concentration and then only last for a minute...

Astral Projection only creates an Astral Form for you on the Astral Plane, how is that even broken?

...Seriously Seerow, don't get into this arguement if you DON'T EVEN HAVE UP TO DATE INFORMATION!

russdm

2013-12-30, 08:46 PM

The idea that the world is your oyster and you can do absolutely anything you can imagine is a nice and alluring one

The 3rd/3.5 system essentially ran on this concept. It made a lot of claims suggesting it was true, but then the system showed up and mugged you. This only actually applied for Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and other high tier characters (Tier 1 and Tier 2). A fighter in 3.5 was completely borked when trying to do something simple like being able to sneak around, even if that character had worked hard to do and the player paid to get the skills. Rogues get it for free and fighters have to pay cross-class penalties plus going rogue was better and then picking up feats or multiclassing for your fighter proficiencies/feats.

This is of course stems from the 3.5ish problem: People report back and denounce the new system features, only supporting the 3.5 derived stuff even though that stuff is rather crappy in Next. Next should move beyond 3.5, because 3.5 was a borked broken system in core that could and should be improved before it gets used for Next. Pathfinder is not that improvement, considering its essentially 3.5 with houserules that costs more than the 3.5 books did (Core PF book is nearly $50 before tax; 3.5 phb was closer to $35/$36 before tax).

I preferred Next when it was more new stuff and considerably less 3.5 derived garbage. More recent playtest packets brought in more 3.5 stuff and axed more of the new stuff, which with tweaking could have been really interesting to play with. I don't need more 3.5 derived garbage, there is already plenty of that garbage already available and it has a better quality than what is in the playtest stuff.

Mainly though i will wait for it to come out, then go to my local(closest) gaming store and do a bit of a read through before buying the books. To see what they are actually selling.

As for D&D, i think honestly thats its on its last legs. The transtion from 3.5 to 4E ripped open a gapping wound in the game and left it bleeding everywhere. With everything before 4th out of print and only acquirable at used book places, online places, and being Pathfinder (Ewwww), the game is not really going to survive. 5th or Next is definitely going to be Hasbro's last run with the system, but there has been no sign that anybody is interested in picking up the license from Hasbro. And I don't doubt for a second that the designers at WotC are aware they screwed up and Hasbro is probably going to pull the plug.

Plus, there are more and more better game systems out there now that does what D&D tries to do slightly better. D&D tries to have all of them in one system, but other systems focused on that one aspect sell much better. I don't see D&D being able to hold on to its spot in market anymore without serious competition and it just doesn't have the staying power or mass strength. Back in the Day, D&D was the system you used for playing heroic fantasy, nothing was equal. Nowadays, there are plenty of systems you could acquire that do things that D&D fails at in its system.

On a market/economy view: People who employ the older editions won't be buying the newer stuff, and so WotC and Hasbro is losing money on the D&D system. When you lose too much money with something, most companies pull the plug and I expect Hasbro to do the same. Next and its expanded stuff is an attempt by Hasbro to keep D&D profitable. If D&D becomes unprofitable, it gets discontinued and nothing more gets made. (Pathfinder doesn't count whatsoever in my opinion)

Of course, if Hasbro doesn't make WotC make products that are worth buying, then it will make it more likely that Hasbro will pull the plug on D&D and the system may not continue in any way. I am deeply concerned with that, because no more system means no more D&D stuff (Again, Pathfinder doesn't count). D&D then becomes something that gets put into museums or history as game system that was played, rather than a system that gets or is played. As generations of players continue to age or die and get out of the stuff, then D&D naturally slowly dies.

For those going to claim that people will just buy the new stuff, 4E didn't really go over that well with even new people according to reviews and stuff. Plus most of those people might have gone back editions. Selling for a new customer base while ignoring your current one means taking massive profits dives.

For the Gamer, it may end up meaning that the next edition could be the last, because its really hard, nearly impossible in fact to develop anything further for the system without pushing it further away from D&D and what D&D is "Supposed to be".

So i have alot of worry over how Next will get recieved by myself and other gamers and whether our system will survive post Hasbro.

AuraTwilight

2013-12-30, 08:47 PM

Wish practically leaves you bed-ridden for a week when not used to replicate an 8th level spell's effects.

This is nothing. Literally, this is so not a deterrent or a penalty whatsoever.

Astral Projection only creates an Astral Form for you on the Astral Plane, how is that even broken?

That depends; do you have astral versions of your equipment, including consumables? Can your Astral Form damage other creatures if they enter combat?

Whiteagle

2013-12-30, 08:59 PM

This is nothing. Literally, this is so not a deterrent or a penalty whatsoever.
...You mean having a Strength Penalty of -4 for 2d4 days isn’t a problem?
Even though anyone could easily grapple you and throw your now feeble ass in a river and watch you drown?

That depends; do you have astral versions of your equipment, including consumables? Can your Astral Form damage other creatures if they enter combat?
You do have Astral copies of your equipment, but I think the Astral Plane is considered a full Plane in its own right now, I.E. like the Elemental Plane of Fire or Air, so the only things you can effect are already there...

...I don't really know for sure, but the Spell description makes it sound like it doesn't make you incorporeal, but literally projects a copy of you into the world of Spirits.

Envyus

2013-12-30, 09:03 PM

This is nothing. Literally, this is so not a deterrent or a penalty whatsoever.

You are crippled for days. The character can't do anything without being a burden and if you just wait around for a week then you can get attacked or something and have a useless wizard. Who also can't cast spells.

Whiteagle

2013-12-30, 09:15 PM

You are crippled for days. The character can't do anything without being a burden and if you just wait around for a week then you can get attacked or something and have a useless wizard. Who also can't cast spells.
Well he can now get his spells back after a long rest, but he's still freaking crippled unless he spends one third of his disabled time just resting up.

Seerow

2013-12-30, 10:19 PM

...Seriously Seerow, don't get into this arguement if you DON'T EVEN HAVE UP TO DATE INFORMATION!

I pointed out several times I missed the last pack, giving the others plenty of time to correct or inform me. You will remember that WotC pulled all playtest info down off the site, and the last time someone asked for info they were told "Screw you, you should have gotten the playtest while it was up if you care".

That said, your arguments amount to more or less exactly what I'd pieced together from others and don't actually change anything I said. Your entire post amounts to nitpicking details that had been changed when the whole of the argument remains in tact regardless.

Even with the changed skill system, there's still minimal difference between low and high level. You still don't get high level characters who are ever meaningfully better at performing low-level tasks. Even with the extra DC35 check added on top, characters gain capability to barely manage to do it, and never have the ability to do so reliably.

Then, nothing you said about spells is particularly relevant to dissuading the argument that casters still get access to iconic 9th level spells well known for breaking the game. Some of them didn't even bother getting changed. Others did get nerfed, but enough to be brought in line with the power level of the rest of the game? Not particularly.

Yeah, you clearly ARE out of date on your info, since the September Packet brought with it Level based Proficiency Bonus Progression.
Now you get the same Bonus to add to rolls in everything you are "Proficient" with, Attack Rolls, Skill Rolls, Ect.
This bonus gradually increases depending on your TOTAL Level, topping out at a +6 at Level 19.

So people with a trained skill now get +1 to +6. They used to get +1d6 to 1d12. You've gone from a delta of 3 on average to a delta of 5 on average, between level 1 and 20. This is so little as to be meaningless. It does power down the low level characters some, but then you and scow have both mentioned a +5 expertise bonus that can get applied (which based on Scow's post is available at level 1), so the low level character is still capable of basically everything the high level character is.

Because NPC probably don't get the +1 to +6 Proficiency Bonus...

So NPCs can't ever be trained in a skill? That's ludicrous. There's no such thing as an NPC thief, or diplomat? No professional rock climbers or swimmers? The only people who are ever capable of anything are the Player Characters? That's so absolutely ridiculous I can't imagine you have any point in posting except hoping I fell off the internet and would never both responding to this post.

And AGAIN, you are using out of date info...
Highest DC is 35; Nearly Impossible, so challenging that only Demigods and their ilk can succeed without assistance.
A PC can have: +5 from the relevant Ability Modifier, +6 from having Proficiency in that particular Skill, and an additional +5 for having Expertise with said Skill.
Fully Optimized, your Character has a ten percent chance of success at the things GODSPAWN can do!

Great a 10% chance. At level 20 they can kill those demigods. Some adventure paths have them killing gods. But they only have a 10% chance of achieving something that other things of their level can.

Meanwhile, the level 1 character is sitting at around a +9 or so (compared to the absolutely maxed out +15), and while they can't quite hit that DC35 check, they can hit basically everything else.

Uh, have you READ the new descriptions for these Spells?

Wish practically leaves you bed-ridden for a week when not used to replicate an 8th level spell's effects.

a minor penalty to strength for a class that doesn't care about strength at all. Oh devastating.

Time Stop only give you a maximum of five rounds, and if you so much as TOUCH anything else it immediately ends.

You mean exactly what time stop has always done?

Gate requires Concentration and then only last for a minute...

A minute is all you need.

Astral Projection only creates an Astral Form for you on the Astral Plane, how is that even broken?

If you can't think of at least a dozen ways to take advantage of that, I'm not sure why we're having this conversation. You probably felt Wizards were just fine in every edition prior as well.

Whiteagle

2013-12-30, 10:48 PM

Even with the changed skill system, there's still minimal difference between low and high level. You still don't get high level characters who are ever meaningfully better at performing low-level tasks. Even with the extra DC35 check added on top, characters gain capability to barely manage to do it, and never have the ability to do so reliably
Except for gaining at least a single tier of competence in anything they're trained in...

So people with a trained skill now get +1 to +6. They used to get +1d6 to 1d12. You've gone from a delta of 3 on average to a delta of 5 on average, between level 1 and 20. This is so little as to be meaningless. It does power down the low level characters some, but then you and scow have both mentioned a +5 expertise bonus that can get applied (which based on Scow's post is available at level 1), so the low level character is still capable of basically everything the high level character is.
Yeah, Expertise Bonus, which only the Rouge gets at Level 1 because Skill Monkey Class, and Bard at Level 3...

...which they only get on FOUR Skills or Tools...

...That represent the fact that they are EXTRA good with these particular Skills or Tools...

...Something USEFUL for two Classes turned to for Skill Ability.

So NPCs can't ever be trained in a skill? That's ludicrous. There's no such thing as an NPC thief, or diplomat? No professional rock climbers or swimmers? The only people who are ever capable of anything are the Player Characters? That's so absolutely ridiculous I can't imagine you have any point in posting except hoping I fell off the internet and would never both responding to this post.
I said "Probably," as in, "Of all the NPCs ever encountered, the probablility of one having a Proficency Bonus in a particular Skill is low."

Great a 10% chance. At level 20 they can kill those demigods. Some adventure paths have them killing gods. But they only have a 10% chance of achieving something that other things of their level can.

Meanwhile, the level 1 character is sitting at around a +9 or so (compared to the absolutely maxed out +15), and while they can't quite hit that DC35 check, they can hit basically everything else.
Absolutely maxed out is +16 actually, which means the difference between a Highly Skilled Rouge at Level 1 and THE SAME Highly Skilled Rouge at Level 19 is FIVE POINTS!

And, surprise surprise, that is the EXACT bonus one can gain on an Ability Modifier going from 10 to 20!

a minor penalty to strength for a class that doesn't care about strength at all. Oh devastating.
See Drowning Wizards...

A minute is all you need.
Good, now make a Constitution Check to not break Concentration while the Fire Elemental Lord is delivering a flaming kick to your crotch for sleeping with his wife.

Seerow

2013-12-30, 11:28 PM

Except for gaining at least a single tier of competence in anything they're trained in...

A single tier is 25%. Going from being able to do something 25% to 50% is a noticeable improvement, but it should not be the sum total of what you gain from gaining 20 levels while focused on that type of thing.

Yeah, Expertise Bonus, which only the Rouge gets at Level 1 because Skill Monkey Class, and Bard at Level 3...

Okay so it's worse than I thought. Any non-rogue/bard is completely incapable of hitting those DC35 checks you were talking about in this case. So now we're back to basically exactly where we were with the skill dice, except rogues/bards got a little better. Yay?

Absolutely maxed out is +16 actually, which means the difference between a Highly Skilled Rouge at Level 1 and THE SAME Highly Skilled Rouge at Level 19 is FIVE POINTS!

And, surprise surprise, that is the EXACT bonus one can gain on an Ability Modifier going from 10 to 20!

I was actually giving the benefit of the doubt for the low level rogue having only +3 attribute (so +3 +5 +1 = +9. So going from 1 to 20 gets you a +7 overall, not just the +5 from tier), and even considered that +7 a minimal effect. So why are you trying to correct me downwards and call it a victory?

So over the course of 20 levels your skill mod improves as much as an attribute modifier. So what? I've already made it clear attributes ranging between 0 and 5 aren't satisfactory. So why would you think that the skill following that same range would be more satisfying?

I said "Probably," as in, "Of all the NPCs ever encountered, the probablility of one having a Proficency Bonus in a particular Skill is low."

Why?

And even ignoring that question and going back to what you initially responded to, the delta between the untrained commoner and the trained non-rogue is very low. You get a level 1 Fighter with 16 strength and an untrained commoner with 10 strength, and the commoner has a +0 vs the Fighter's +4. If the Fighter can succeed at a task, the commoner can succeed at the same task with only a marginally lower failure rate. Yet what I was being told was that the Fighter doesn't have to roll for most of those things, but the Commoner either does or auto fails.

If your actual counter argument is "The commoner auto fails because he doesn't have this skill trained" then having a rank of skill training making tasks of DCX auto success should be something hard coded into that skill. Because otherwise we're still looking at complete non-rules that result in completely different experiences between tables ostensibly using the same rules.

See Drowning Wizards...

I'm going to point out that a -4 strength penalty is literally -2 to strength based checks. This feeds back into the whole bounded accuracy problem. You are saying this is crippling and leaves the wizard bedridden, but in fact makes a minimal difference to anything that matters. If your Wizard is suddenly drowning because of a -2 penalty, then chances are even your fighter with high strength is drowning.

Good, now make a Constitution Check to not break Concentration while the Fire Elemental Lord is delivering a flaming kick to your crotch for sleeping with his wife.

And now you're literally making up non-sequitors to try to ignore the issue. Congratulations.

Joe the Rat

2013-12-31, 12:04 AM

On a market/economy view: People who employ the older editions won't be buying the newer stuff, and so WotC and Hasbro is losing money on the D&D system. When you lose too much money with something, most companies pull the plug and I expect Hasbro to do the same. Next and its expanded stuff is an attempt by Hasbro to keep D&D profitable. If D&D becomes unprofitable, it gets discontinued and nothing more gets made. (Pathfinder doesn't count whatsoever in my opinion)

Might explain why they're figuratively 'clearing the back room' with all of the re-releases and commemorative editions. Get a little cash off of the old IP that is literally sitting there. Heh, maybe they'll take the Disney model and start a 'Vault' cycle of availability. Get it before it's gone (for a while).

Well, that or it's a feeder strategy: Get all five generations of grognards back on the feed chain, so they're looking at the same 'catalog' that the new stuff will come in. Bring everyone back to the table, and see how many you can hook into picking up a new system. If they delivered on their mission statement, this would be a huge success in making everyone happy, or at least happy enough to give it a go.

That's a pretty big if though.

Whiteagle

2013-12-31, 12:13 AM

A single tier is 25%. Going from being able to do something 25% to 50% is a noticeable improvement, but it should not be the sum total of what you gain from gaining 20 levels while focused on that type of thing.
So doubling your chance to succeed at something after 20 Levels isn't good enough for you?

Okay so it's worse than I thought. Any non-rogue/bard is completely incapable of hitting those DC35 checks you were talking about in this case. So now we're back to basically exactly where we were with the skill dice, except rogues/bards got a little better. Yay?
...Except that's just "Unassisted..."
You see, Bard gets this nifty little trick called "Inspire Competence" that allows him to add his Proficiency Bonus to any check made on a Stat of his choice.
Bam, extra +1 to +6 on anything your party’s Bard chooses at the cost of a single action.

I was actually giving the benefit of the doubt for the low level rogue having only +3 attribute (so +3 +5 +1 = +9. So going from 1 to 20 gets you a +7 overall, not just the +5 from tier), and even considered that +7 a minimal effect. So why are you trying to correct me downwards and call it a victory?
Sorry, math kafuffle, I figured this Rouge would be bumping up his Primary Stat a couple of times over the course of his twenty level career…

So over the course of 20 levels your skill mod improves as much as an attribute modifier. So what? I've already made it clear attributes ranging between 0 and 5 aren't satisfactory. So why would you think that the skill following that same range would be more satisfying?
I believe the problem here isn’t the system’s lack of range, but your own expectations of numbers bloat…

Why?
Because if an NPC has a Proficiency Bonus, or as you put it, “A +X Awesome Bonus for being a PC,” it means they must be a Professional at whatever it is they are doing…

And even ignoring that question and going back to what you initially responded to, the delta between the untrained commoner and the trained non-rogue is very low. You get a level 1 Fighter with 16 strength and an untrained commoner with 10 strength, and the commoner has a +0 vs the Fighter's +4. If the Fighter can succeed at a task, the commoner can succeed at the same task with only a marginally lower failure rate. Yet what I was being told was that the Fighter doesn't have to roll for most of those things, but the Commoner either does or auto fails.
Yes, having the chance of failure reduced by 20%, (IE 1/4th!) is only a marginal reduction…

Again, I believe the problem here is your own expectations of numbers bloat…

I'm going to point out that a -4 strength penalty is literally -2 to strength based checks. This feeds back into the whole bounded accuracy problem. You are saying this is crippling and leaves the wizard bedridden, but in fact makes a minimal difference to anything that matters. If your Wizard is suddenly drowning because of a -2 penalty, then chances are even your fighter with high strength is drowning.
Sorry, misapplied terminology, -4 IS his Strength Modifier, his Strength SCORE is 3 at the time...

And now you're literally making up non-sequitors to try to ignore the issue. Congratulations.
No I'm not, if something could distract you from holding your Concentration, the DM can call for a Check.
So if you are trying to slip out after sleeping with the Elemental Fire Lord's Lady, and you FAIL your Con Check, your portal out goes POOF!

TuggyNE

2013-12-31, 12:40 AM

So doubling your chance to succeed at something after 20 Levels isn't good enough for you?

No, it isn't. My chance of climbing the aforementioned 5.12 pitch is nil; the chance of an experienced climber managing it should be nearly 100%, although they may require some retries in a few places.

Because if an NPC has a Proficiency Bonus, or as you put it, “A +X Awesome Bonus for being a PC,” it means they must be a Professional at whatever it is they are doing…

Yes. Fancy that, an NPC with competence. How very unusual!

No I'm not, if something could distract you from holding your Concentration, the DM can call for a Check.
So if you are trying to slip out after sleeping with the Elemental Fire Lord's Lady, and you FAIL your Con Check, your portal out goes POOF!

There's a simple solution to this: it's called "not being an utter idiot and getting in stupid soap opera situations". I recommend all characters try this solution once in a while.

More to the point: gate is not, as in previous versions, capable of no-save control, so hurray, D&DN got something right and the spell is no longer minionmancy. (Astral projection is still just as powerful as it ever was, though, right down to equipment duplication bugs.)

Friv

2013-12-31, 12:56 AM

So doubling your chance to succeed at something after 20 Levels isn't good enough for you?

I think that this is a situation where the absolute percentage, rather than the relative percentage, should be considered.

In 3 out of 4 possible results, the Level 1 character and the Level 20 character in this theoretical example will do equally well or poorly. In only 1 out of 4 possible results does the Level 20 character outperform his trainee self.

That is very tight change-wise, and there aren't any skill trick style effects to make you better in non-mechanical ways (such as "intimidate multiple people at once", or "climb at double speed on successful checks", or what have you), so the effect is that the top tier of people in DDN are only significantly better at combat and spells than their trainee selves.

Seerow

2013-12-31, 01:00 AM

I think that this is a situation where the absolute percentage, rather than the relative percentage, should be considered.

In 3 out of 4 possible results, the Level 1 character and the Level 20 character in this theoretical example will do equally well or poorly. In only 1 out of 4 possible results does the Level 20 character outperform his trainee self.

That is very tight change-wise, and there aren't any skill trick style effects to make you better in non-mechanical ways (such as "intimidate multiple people at once", or "climb at double speed on successful checks", or what have you), so the effect is that the top tier of people in DDN are only significantly better at combat and spells than their trainee selves.

Even in combat, the difference is far less pronounced than any other edition to date. But it is at least better than skills, because there's multiple factors being tweaked (hit chance, ac, damage, and hp) where with skills you only have a single factor.

If you had something like mentioned previously where you go back to the skill die but instead of +die size gain an extra die, that would be nice.

If you had something where every time your skill proficiency improved, you could auto succeed at an additional category of tasks (so by the time you've got the +6 bonus you only actually have to roll for those DC35 checks), that would help (though it would still suck that you can only succeed on those checks ever as a rogue, and even then only if it favors your primary stat and is trained fully... and only 10% of the time. But it's something).

If you had something giving you skill tricks like you mention, so by high levels the skilled character can do lots of cool stuff that the low level character can't even attempt because it's not a check, it comes with the training, that would help.

But as it is? The skill system fails to provide meaningful progression to player characters. On top of that huge glaring issue brought to us courtesy of bounded accuracy, we also have a bunch of vague nebulously defined guidelines, such as what actually qualifies as a very hard DC? Why is breaking down a door something that supposedly requires a demigod? The world may never know. What happens when you fail a climb check? Ask your DM, the rules aren't going to tell you. And so on.

SassyQuatch

2013-12-31, 01:08 AM

So doubling your chance to succeed at something after 20 Levels isn't good enough for you?
At the Next Tavern:
Level 1 Dwarf Fighter: "Hey, look. I can lift this flagon of ale to my lips and drink it!"
Level 20 Dwarf Fighter: "Ha! I can do that task fifty percent better!"

Jacob.Tyr

2013-12-31, 01:15 AM

Potentially talking out of my ass here but in regards to the skill checks isn't it likely that in a 20 level career you'll have picked up a few items of note to give you a bonus? Is having better tools for crafting, or climbing, or whatever skill you're invested in built into the latest test packets? Or is this problematic in the "Christmas Tree" sort of way?

In regards to 5E being good or not as a successor to 3.x I'm sadly going to side with Seerow and Kurald. I don't really think bounded accuracy is all that bad, nor am I judging it for not having the math entirely down. Hell, I really like the way feats went (the exception being I don't like stat boosts being a missed feat), and the subclass choices are pretty awesome.

End of the day, though, there are still classes that are clearly tier 1 or tier 2. The wizard is still more powerful than the fighter, and while balance shouldn't matter in a party game you still wind up with fighters not being better than pretty much anyone at anything.

I really hate the proficiency bonus, as well. I wasn't a big fan of iterative attacks, but the fact that BAB has been replaced by one big flat bonus for everything is, well, boring. It may not mean too much mechanically, and the numbers may change, but it's less interesting to me. Sorry to say. I don't know that that's been in there for too long, though, so it may not be in the end product.

End of the day I'm not going to buy it until I've looked over someone's copy first. Playtesting it and running numbers and reading the packets has just left me feeling sort of meh. I liked it more earlier on, and maybe they are going to bring back some of the more interesting things I saw then, but for now I'm going to just have to wait and see.

Seerow

2013-12-31, 01:20 AM

Scow2

2013-12-31, 01:24 AM

So people with a trained skill now get +1 to +6. They used to get +1d6 to 1d12. You've gone from a delta of 3 on average to a delta of 5 on average, between level 1 and 20. This is so little as to be meaningless. It does power down the low level characters some, but then you and scow have both mentioned a +5 expertise bonus that can get applied (which based on Scow's post is available at level 1), so the low level character is still capable of basically everything the high level character is.It keeps character capability at not-incomprehensible. Skill number boosts are no longer both qualitative and quantitative. The game does constrain noncombat ability to mortal levels (Except for casters, who cannot replicate mortal abilities with their spells as they could in 3.5). They went out of their way to ensure the system doesn't break down like it did in 4e and 3e (Though, as I was corrected, it was in opposite directions). 4e had brinksmanship to try to keep up, 3e had brinksmanship break the game badly.

One of the DCs in one of the adventure packets, to break a large carved stone pillar is "DC 18, with Disadvantage". In fact, I think they deliberately withheld a lot of "Adjudicating skills" in the 'core' to have the adventure modules handle them instead.

Combat changes dramatically as levels climb, despite the constrained math. Class features can be powerful, and remain relevant at all levels of play (No more "+1 every few levels, sucks to be you if you MC out"). AC starts to fall behind at high levels, but HP outpaces damage dealt. Low level vs low-level combat tends to be quick ambushes with lots of whiffling without sources of advantage, while high-level vs. high-level combat tends to be drawn out, epic battles resolved over a number of turns (But each individual turn resolves significantly faster than in 3 or 4e). High-level vs. low-level battles tend to again be quick ambushes that either keep the high-level characters on their toes (A la Tucker's Kobolds), or steamroll with a meaningful but not crippling loss of resources.

... I think the latest playtest packet isn't testing skill progression size as much as it's testing the idea of a unified Proficiency bonus used on attacks, saves, and skill checks to speed up play and keep a character sheet simple.

Just to Browse

2013-12-31, 01:31 AM

This bonus gradually increases depending on your TOTAL Level, topping out at a +6 at Level 19.

Because NPC probably don't get the +1 to +6 Proficiency Bonus...These aren't even arguments against Seerow's point. I recommend reading the beginning of the discussion again so that you understand why a scaling +1 to +6 still shows his point to be correct.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 01:40 AM

1-6 is a 30% on a d20, and an increase by 25% over a level 1 character.

A character that has a 50% chance of pulling off a given stunt at low levels can pull it off 75% of the time at higher levels - a 150% increase in success rate, and 50% decrease in failure rate.

A character that has a 10% chance of pulling off a stunt at level 1 has a 35% chance at high levels - that's a 350% increase in ability. It stays on the d20.

The +5 Rogues get is supposed to make them awesomely reliable at skills, and should not really be considered when dealing with "What's reasonable for a character to do".

The most-frequently-used range of skill DCs is 10-20, with 25 being "Stuff High-level characters struggle against but still beat".

Seerow

2013-12-31, 01:47 AM

It keeps character capability at not-incomprehensible. Skill number boosts are no longer both qualitative and quantitative. The game does constrain noncombat ability to mortal levels (Except for casters, who cannot replicate mortal abilities with their spells as they could in 3.5). They went out of their way to ensure the system doesn't break down like it did in 4e and 3e (Though, as I was corrected, it was in opposite directions). 4e had brinksmanship to try to keep up, 3e had brinksmanship break the game badly.

See here you see "High level character becoming skilled enough to not have to worry about mundane tasks" and claim it is breaking the game. I see that as a feature, not a bug. As you gain level you should get noticeably better at things. There should be things at high levels that you can perform reliably that a lower level character can't attempt at all.

Ideally I want to see something like:
Task 1:
Level 1-50%
Level 10-100%
Level 20-100%

Task 2:
Level 1-0%
Level 10-50%
Level 20-100%

Task 3:
Level 1-0%
Level 10-0%
Level 20-50%

Instead, DDN has:
Task 1:
Level 1-50%
Level 10-65%
Level 20-85%

Task 2:
Level 1-35%
Level 10-50%
Level 20-70%

Task 3:
Level 1-15%
Level 10-30%
Level 20-50%

Basically we are running into an issue where the game's core principle of bounded accuracy is designed specifically to generate results that are the exact opposite of what I want to see.

One of the DCs in one of the adventure packets, to break a large carved stone pillar is "DC 18, with Disadvantage". In fact, I think they deliberately withheld a lot of "Adjudicating skills" in the 'core' to have the adventure modules handle them instead.

And if a DM never read that module, for his own game he will say "DC 25" because breaking down a large stone pillar is a very hard task. And there is nothing to say he is wrong, except for the fact he just took something that the designers might intend for the Fighter to do easily, and make it impossible for him to do instead.

Combat changes dramatically as levels climb, despite the constrained math.

Already noted earlier that combat has more variables, so it's not as bad as skills. It's just still much slower scaling than earlier editions of D&D. AD&D might be slower scaling just due to the lower HP bloat pre-3e, but I'd bet that a -10 AC and THAC0 of 1 makes a level 20 fighter stand up against low level enemies far longer than a DDN fighter 20 against similar enemies.

Class features can be powerful, and remain relevant at all levels of play (No more "+1 every few levels, sucks to be you if you MC out").

Scrolling through it I see some decent class features, but again nothing that compared to some of the better designed 3.x classes. In general Spellcasting trumps all other class features with ease, but most of the spellcasters got extra class features too, because people whining about dead levels (this same sort of whining got us Feats/Ability scores as class features).

... I think the latest playtest packet isn't testing skill progression size as much as it's testing the idea of a unified Proficiency bonus used on attacks, saves, and skill checks to speed up play and keep a character sheet simple.

That's possible. And it's honestly not too awful of an idea at its core. The problem is tying it to bounded accuracy, and making it your ONLY bonus to a lot of things (besides attribute).

For example, having some hybrid of this and 4e's half level could get you something resembling 3.x but with an RNG that is easier to constrain at any given level. Say characters gained 1/2 level to all of their combat related checks, and got to add this 1-6 modifier to things they're supposed to be really good at, and half that (round down) to things they're sort of good at.

Or for skills, keep skill training, but each rank you invest into the skill gets multiplied by that modifier. Cap it at 5 ranks of skill training. So you can have a level 1 character focused entirely on one skill with +5 in that skill and a level 20 character with whole focus on that skill with +30 in it. With plenty of granularity in between. If you want to make attributes more important, cap ranks of skill training in attribute.

Or, you have different levels of skill training, each providing 1d6, the amount you can train is capped by that bonus. Or similar thing but you can add the proficiency bonus in addition to the xd6, since on a weighted bell curve like that every +1 means significantly more than on a flat d20 roll.

Honestly having a flat +x modifier dependent on level that gets added into a bunch of different things is fine. The problem isn't with that concept, it's with the implementation, or more specifically with how that implementation got forced as a result of bounded accuracy.

Just to Browse

2013-12-31, 01:53 AM

1-6 is a 30% on a d20, and an increase by 25% over a level 1 character.

A character that has a 50% chance of pulling off a given stunt at low levels can pull it off 75% of the time at higher levels - a 150% increase in success rate, and 50% decrease in failure rate.

A character that has a 10% chance of pulling off a stunt at level 1 has a 35% chance at high levels - that's a 350% increase in ability. It stays on the d20.

If I only have 1 cent and cannot buy food, you can give me a nickel and tell me I now have 600% of the money I used to have, but I will still not be able to buy food.

If you give benefits that do not allow highly-trained people to easily succeed at remedial tasks at any level, it does not matter if those benefits doubled or tripled because they fail to achieve the goal at any level.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 02:10 AM

If I only have 1 cent and cannot buy food, you can give me a nickel and tell me I now have 600% of the money I used to have, but I will still not be able to buy food.

If you give benefits that do not allow highly-trained people to easily succeed at remedial tasks at any level, it does not matter if those benefits doubled or tripled because they fail to achieve the goal at any level.Highly-trained people autosucceed at remedial tasks. A level 1 character is highly trained at what he does. You roll to try to pull off extraordinary stunts, like clinging to a clifface while under attack, or pulling off a mid-jump stunt, or pulling off Ben Hurr-style driving skills in a chariot race.

Characters being incapable of doing anything effective any decent amount of time is a conceit created from the godawful skill systems used in 3.5 and 4e.

Just to Browse

2013-12-31, 02:16 AM

Incorrect. Highly trained characters succeed about 65% of the time at remedial tasks, and even paragons of training and superheroes succeed only about 85% of the time.

Even 3e doesn't screw it up like that.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 02:19 AM

Remedial tasks are DC 5, and only provoked in extraordinary circumstances.

DC 10 is the "easy" end of the extraordinary spectrum, but still extraordinary.

SiuiS

2013-12-31, 06:18 AM

But the skill dice in of themselves weren't enough. Not with only going from 1d6 to 1d12. The difference between the best skill and worst in the world is only 3 average points?

This isn't correct. A rogue had at best 1d20 (minimum ten, average 15) + 1d6 + 1d12 + attribute. A minimum competency character who still had training at all had 1d20 + 1d6 + attribute. Across ten attempts the success rate would be vastly different; the level 20 loser rogue rolls a minimum of 2+attribute, the specialist rogue at 20 gets a minimum of 12+attribute and averages 24+attribute 50% of the time.

Given that the skill system is moving away from "roll skill, the end" to extended action tasks requiring multiple rolls, that becomes very relevant. Reducing average DC by three and actually being clear about extended actions is all that ruleset needed.

And to be clear, them abandoning the skill dice in favor of +x bonuses, which (again judging by Scow because I never got that last packet) run from +1 to +3 over 10 levels isn't what anybody who complained about skill dice wanted. Blaming the playtesters who didn't like such a narrow range of skills for WotC abandoning a new system in favor of a different system with a similarly narrow range of skills is seriously misplaced blame. Skill dice could have worked if it was something like +1d6 each time you gained a new rank.

That would have been better, yes. The slow curve they had wasn't so bad though, when you actually map it out. It makes for a fantastic low power game where DC thirty stuff shows up for things that have Hercules severe trouble.

I never saw your proof, so I'm not sure what it is I'm expected to discredit.

I don't want you to discredit anything. I would like you to provide numbers crunching to back up your points when relevant though.

So your ruling has just hit situation 2a), and an untrained commoner is climbing all but the toughest cliffs with no need to worry about anything ever. This is one of the 6 reasonable interpretations I laid out, but other games will play dramatically differently because there are no ****ing rules in the game.

No, because the commoner hasn't set himself up for rolling. He's my just gonna walk at the wall, grab it, and start throwing bones. The story needs to be spun such that his trying and having a chance makes sense, then he rolls. Joe Schmoe rolls up with gear and proficiency, studies the climb and has a few close calls, cool! Joe Schmoe rolls up and barehands his way to the Himalayan summit? Auto fail. Sorry, make that make sense and don't bank on mechanics he couldn't possibly know about.

Am I the only one that finds this bizarrely inconsistent?

Not at all. The "this is a Stupid idea" and "the math is borked" are two separate things I am refuting. The idea isn't stupid and the estimation of Bork is wrong (potentially; it may not be but I would like to see it checked).

If the system works off narrative gravitas, math only gets in the way, as evidenced by all the protests that correct math is unnecessary when you have n.g. But if that's the case, then throw out all the math, all of it, and don't try to "mathematically prove" that the system works: you already said "math is unimportant, we got fiat here". Put your dice where your mouth is.

Why? The idea that unless you're simulating every breath you must automatically play fiat Lets Pretend is asinine. It's an absurd extension and is quite frankly not something that even needs to be addressed. I'll give you an example of the basics of the system, tell me if this is so stupid and the math gets in the way, would you?

Player: I hit the enemy with my sword.
DM: no, you haven't set that up.
Player: oh, okay. I walk to within melee range (n.g.) and hit him.
DM: okay, roll.

And your reduction to the absurd, in action;

Player: I hit the enemy wih my sword.
DM: no, you haven't set that up.
Player: I walk to within melee range and hit him with my sword.
DM: he does in the ensuing sword fight, no put the die down, he does, his blood spraying everywhere, and the rest of the bandits are short work. You quickly move on... [cue scenes leading to climax and victory]

Because why the heck not go straight to storytelling, right?
You're very smart, Tuggy. You also sometimes phrase things poorly. That doesn't mean the idea is bad, though. Right? So we hVe conversations trying to nail down the idea and then judge it. All I ask is you ex tend the same courtesy; the idea that maybe what I'm saying isn't quite so stupid as my wording or blasé presentation would indicate. Do you really think having to set things up I. Order to attempt them is so strange? You must move within melee range to attack. You must have medical training to heal someone. You must give the impression that you're competent in order to climb a mountain. Simple.

I want my in-character decisions to be meaningful, not busywork. "You must remember X amount of random boilerplate to ride" is not my idea of a good game. If that is D&DN, take it away, I don't want it.

Then I'm sure you're tired of 3.5 and it's incessant "you need a weapon of X magic and material to deal wth this guy", too, right? I mean, so much memorization! but really, that's all it is, is keywords creating narrative flow. If you have the [keyword] you can overcome things that require it. Werewolves require [silver], or [wolvesbane], or [whatever else]. The point of a more narrative syTem is your stats give you the ability to forge that whatever else in the story. Playing "Mother May I" with the DM all the time is the exact sort of Bs 3.5 fought against; no, I /can/ break this wall because I have /Adamantine/ it's in the rules and you can't stop me without being a ****.

This is the same thing, only with more collaboration and less antagonism because I want my games to be fun and not about "memorizing" more "boilerplate" rules that the DM so I can high OP my way past his defenses.

The 3rd/3.5 system essentially ran on this concept. It made a lot of claims suggesting it was true, but then the system showed up and mugged you. This only actually applied for Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and other high tier characters (Tier 1 and Tier 2). A fighter in 3.5 was completely borked when trying to do something simple like being able to sneak around, even if that character had worked hard to do and the player paid to get the skills. Rogues get it for free and fighters have to pay cross-class penalties plus going rogue was better and then picking up feats or multiclassing for your fighter proficiencies/feats.

Well, a low level fighter can have attribute 1, skill 1, item 6-ish, and around fifth level should be averaging, lessee... Around plus ten I think? On stealth if he wants to. That's not bad, unless you go by brinksmanship and only the top 80th percentile matters.

No, it isn't. My chance of climbing the aforementioned 5.12 pitch is nil; the chance of an experienced climber managing it should be nearly 100%, although they may require some retries in a few places.

Well, wait. That's contradictory. He should succeed at climbing 100% of the time, but he also fails in the middle a few?

I think that this is a situation where the absolute percentage, rather than the relative percentage, should be considered.

In 3 out of 4 possible results, the Level 1 character and the Level 20 character in this theoretical example will do equally well or poorly. In only 1 out of 4 possible results does the Level 20 character outperform his trainee self.

Is that true?

TuggyNE

2013-12-31, 06:48 AM

Why? The idea that unless you're simulating every breath you must automatically play fiat Lets Pretend is asinine. It's an absurd extension and is quite frankly not something that even needs to be addressed. I'll give you an example of the basics of the system, tell me if this is so stupid and the math gets in the way, would you?

Player: I hit the enemy with my sword.
DM: no, you haven't set that up.
Player: oh, okay. I walk to within melee range (n.g.) and hit him.
DM: okay, roll.

And your reduction to the absurd, in action;

Player: I hit the enemy wih my sword.
DM: no, you haven't set that up.
Player: I walk to within melee range and hit him with my sword.
DM: he does in the ensuing sword fight, no put the die down, he does, his blood spraying everywhere, and the rest of the bandits are short work. You quickly move on... [cue scenes leading to climax and victory]

Because why the heck not go straight to storytelling, right?
You're very smart, Tuggy. You also sometimes phrase things poorly. That doesn't mean the idea is bad, though. Right? So we hVe conversations trying to nail down the idea and then judge it. All I ask is you ex tend the same courtesy; the idea that maybe what I'm saying isn't quite so stupid as my wording or blasé presentation would indicate. Do you really think having to set things up I. Order to attempt them is so strange? You must move within melee range to attack. You must have medical training to heal someone. You must give the impression that you're competent in order to climb a mountain. Simple.

The problem is not "go into melee" level of prerequisites, which is obvious and is also actually a meaningful decision (with whom do you engage first? and on what side?), the problem is "I aim for a weak point". Of course you aim for a weak point, who wouldn't? If there's nothing to lose, and everything to gain (i.e., the ability to actually attempt to attack a dragon), then that should just be automatic, like saying, "I grip my sword firmly, and also I look at the dragon to see where it is, and also I try to avoid its claws and tail, and also I make sure to position my feet, and …". Just how much do you have to specify?

Likewise, I'm not in favor of a system that makes you roll for everything. Never have been. I am in favor of a system that, if you roll for anything that could ever really be relevant (including, in rare cases, weird things like footwork or active dodging or something, assuming the circumstances are right), the roll works properly, and furthermore that the system tells you when you don't need to roll by the simple expedient of allowing you a nice 100% success rate. In other words, where you auto-succeed on simple tasks, not because they are fiated as simple and thus you don't have to roll against the DC and possibly fail, but because, if you did roll, every roll would come up "yes".

Then I'm sure you're tired of 3.5 and it's incessant "you need a weapon of X magic and material to deal wth this guy", too, right? I mean, so much memorization! but really, that's all it is, is keywords creating narrative flow. If you have the [keyword] you can overcome things that require it. Werewolves require [silver], or [wolvesbane], or [whatever else]. The point of a more narrative syTem is your stats give you the ability to forge that whatever else in the story. Playing "Mother May I" with the DM all the time is the exact sort of Bs 3.5 fought against; no, I /can/ break this wall because I have /Adamantine/ it's in the rules and you can't stop me without being a ****.

Exactly. Relevant interactions are spelled out, in the rules, and are abstracted to some extent where practical. Irrelevant interactions are abstracted very thoroughly, but not by reducing them to fiat: by leaving a little stub of fully-functional rules text that applies just as much to them, but handles most of the edge cases.

Well, wait. That's contradictory. He should succeed at climbing 100% of the time, but he also fails in the middle a few?

Always succeeds, eventually, at climbing the pitch, no matter how long it takes. May fail to make progress at times during the pitch. Doesn't fall.

Is that true?

Approximately. Example:
{table=head]Level|Success A|Success B|Failure
1|50%|0%|50%
20|50%|35%|15%[/table]
As you can see, half the time there would have been a success either way, while 15% of the time there would have been a failure either way. The high-level character's skill matters precisely 35% of the time, in this example, borrowed from Seerow earlier.

That's right folks, step right up for 20 levels of being more relevant than a first-level adventurer only a third of the time. Can I get an amen?

SiuiS

2013-12-31, 08:44 AM

The problem is not "go into melee" level of prerequisites, which is obvious and is also actually a meaningful decision (with whom do you engage first? and on what side?), the problem is "I aim for a weak point". Of course you aim for a weak point, who wouldn't? If there's nothing to lose, and everything to gain (i.e., the ability to actually attempt to attack a dragon), then that should just be automatic, like saying, "I grip my sword firmly, and also I look at the dragon to see where it is, and also I try to avoid its claws and tail, and also I make sure to position my feet, and …". Just how much do you have to specify?

Your complaint is that "I attack the weak point" isn't a complete system. But when you say moving to engage is fine, you reference something else. it's is a double standard; the thing you know intimately is fine despite any complexity but the thing you don't know isn't fine because... I don't even know.

The key there is that, like saying I attack, "I shoot the weak spot" is referencing the buildup in the hypothetical system. But okay, this one specific example doesn't appeal to you even though you've said the concept is sound. You want a different grain is all. That's fine, we don't need hypothetical examples here. I don't need to justify the concept, I just need to show how it works here, right?

In DDN, you get narrative inertia through proficiency, gear and background. A character with proficiency with lock picking can be expected to know how locks work. A character without, probably not.

The argument is that the game system uses a d20, and any creature has an ability score, so any creature can use the d20 and it's ability score to access skills and succeed x% of the time. People then go on to say that is stupid.

I say no, you cannot just say "I have a strength score, therefore I can 100% climb a hard cliff" or whatever the hell a five point twelve is. You need one thing in addition; you need to access the skill system with your attribute, a d20, and justification. You don't cast magic without spell casting (n.g.), you don't use the skill DCs and dice for adventurers without being an adventurer. Or having an alternate n.g. For it, such as being an NPC mountaineer (gains proficiency with climbing tools, say). The thing is, this system is deacriptive, not prescriptive. The noble background gave you retainers; they can't actually do anything though, without this concept, because they do not by default have attributes, can't have class levels and you have no actual political skill or clout. Technically, having the retainers able to achieve anything is a house rule. But that's stupid. It's supposed to be a set of keywords on which the DM can hang other parts of the game. Someone with that background gets Noble, Politics, Servants, and some other stuff as explicit keywords. Any systems that interface with it give that character weight, n.g., to interact with it. A priest can say to the DM "I am a priest, this religious guy will respect that and weigh my words higher" and the DMis supposed to say "yes", not "that's not in the rules, sorry, being a priest only gives you religion as a skill".

Likewise, I'm not in favor of a system that makes you roll for everything. Never have been. I am in favor of a system that, if you roll for anything that could ever really be relevant (including, in rare cases, weird things like footwork or active dodging or something, assuming the circumstances are right), the roll works properly, and furthermore that the system tells you when you don't need to roll by the simple expedient of allowing you a nice 100% success rate. In other words, where you auto-succeed on simple tasks, not because they are fiated as simple and thus you don't have to roll against the DC and possibly fail, but because, if you did roll, every roll would come up "yes".

See, the 100% success rate is one way of doing that, but it's hardly the only way, or even the best way. I am in Favor of DDN removing 100% obsolescence of rolls as something that can be achieved trough system mastery. I am much more in favor of a low baseline of proficiency for everybody such as "you can all light a fire, dress a camp, and stay dry in weather" that isn't extended to every Joe and Jill than I am a builds which weaponise Roleplaying traits.

Exactly. Relevant interactions are spelled out, in the rules, and are abstracted to some extent where practical. Irrelevant interactions are abstracted very thoroughly, but not by reducing them to fiat: by leaving a little stub of fully-functional rules text that applies just as much to them, but handles most of the edge cases.

I am laughing that you keep saying fiat when it hasn't been introduced at all. Do you expect calling something fiat to discredit it? Because right now you're basically saying FATE and nWoD work on fiat because you don't roll life or death struggles for every five feet of wall you climb.

Always succeeds, eventually, at climbing the pitch, no matter how long it takes. May fail to make progress at times during the pitch. Doesn't fall.

But no, you're saying a professional climber should succeed 100% at every roll, but is allowed to fail some rolls during an extended climb.

You need to either accept that a chance of "failure" on the d20 is okay because of the higher average and better spikes, and that climbing is an extended roll and not a one-and-done, or you need to specify that every extended action must be abstracted to a agile roll and the math needs to be balanced around the idea of one roll with life or death consequences in all situations.

Approximately. Example:
{table=head]Level|Success A|Success B|Failure
1|50%|0%|50%
20|50%|35%|15%[/table]
As you can see, half the time there would have been a success either way, while 15% of the time there would have been a failure either way. The high-level character's skill matters precisely 35% of the time, in this example, borrowed from Seerow earlier.

That's right folks, step right up for 20 levels of being more relevant than a first-level adventurer only a third of the time. Can I get an amen?

That's nice, but what's the basis for those numbers? Ah well. I'll check the packet when I get home.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 11:32 AM

The "I attack the weak point!" actually has several points, though it's not something that functions under the core system without tweaks and other details - you first need to be able to know about the weak point, and after that, ensure you're in a situation where you can attack it. Sort of like trying to kill a Hydra - attacking the body doesn't work, you need to kill the heads.

It could make an interesting boss fight needing to kill a dragon by either: Climbing onto it to get past its defenses, Trying to take it out with a bow, bringing to bear a Magic Arrow that can ignore its general immunity to attacks, watch/wait for the dragon to get into a position that makes it vulnerable to attack, using intervening turns to defend and set up the slaying blows, and the like.

Seerow

2013-12-31, 11:59 AM

That's nice, but what's the basis for those numbers? Ah well. I'll check the packet when I get home.

The basis assumed a non-rogue (which in your counter example you tried to use a rogue, which is a single class that gets boosts with skills. If only one class is any good at interact with the skill system, that's a failure in of itself), with training in a skill and 16 attribute at level 1. By level 10, I assume they've gone from 16 to 18 in that attribute, and improved the skill die once. By level 20 they've gone from 18 to 20 in the attribute, and improved the skill die twice more.

So if you start with a task the level 1 character will succeed at 50% of the time, then the level 10 character has improved by effectively +2 letting him succeed 60% of the time. The level 20 character has improved by effectively +3 more letting him succeed 75% of the time. Note: This number is a bit lower than it was earlier given credit for. I believe the numbers Tuggyne pulled were in response to the flat numbers system instead of the skill dice system. Talking about two different but fairly similar skill systems simultaneously is confusing.

Though now that I think about it, for this system, that is an oversimplification, because the skill die does weight the rolls closer to average. So plugging this into anydice, to see what we get.

Starting character's don't have an exactly 50% chance at anything, closest to the mark seems to be right around DC18 (1 lower than the DC 19 I would have guessed), with 47.5% (http://anydice.com/program/30c1). The level 10 character is up to a 57.5% chance of succeeding on the DC18 task. (http://anydice.com/program/30c0)And the level 20 character is up to a 72.5% chance of succeeding on the DC18 task. (http://anydice.com/program/30bf)

Nope, apparently it still scales exactly the same until you get to the extreme ends.

Jacob.Tyr

2013-12-31, 12:06 PM

A 35% improvement in success rate seems pretty good to me, actually. I'm not sure what that chart was trying to prove?

Anyway, if we're to expect characters, NPC or PC, to be able to auto-succeed on basic tasks or things they're highly trained in it really doesn't need to require DM fiat. Taking 10 rules or setting "basic" things to a DC of 1 both work fine for this. In real life I have pretty **** dexterity, but I don't fail to tie my shoes over 25% of the time. I consider this being a case of "Taking 10", because I actually might need to retry it a few times if I'm rushed. Same for walking, climbing a ladder, standing on something to interact with something outside of my reach. I don't fall because I take my time.

This could even be applied to Conan arm wrestling Tiny Tim (opposed checks). Conan isn't stressed out by the competition, and can just relax and pull off an average result for him, breaking Tiny Tim's arm in the process.

I really do dislike the DM fiat that everyone seems to be okay with. If I should be able to do something every time I want to be able to look at my character sheet and know that. Granted I've trivialized some things that might be considered skill challenges by doing this, but if I'm playing an acrobatic character in light armor I think a few jumps at my leisure should be damned trivial. I've also run into house rules regarding plot armored doors, where my 20 strength two-handed weapon user couldn't break a few iron bars (if we were playing RAW, I could've bent them with a roll of 10 or lower using my hands, or easily trashed them with a few weapon blows or shoulder ramming them).

Rules need to reflect the rules. Seriously. If don't have to roll for something, it should be because, by the rules, you succeed on a one. Not because, by the rules, you might succeed 15% more often so screw rolling. We don't need different resolution mechanics for success in the same situation using the same skill based on who is doing it (unless they have some feat that grants advantage, or a take 20 or something).

So... is take 10 not in Next? I don't remember seeing it, but if it is my complaints about the skill system are (mostly) gone.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 12:21 PM

DC 18 (A difficult check) being close to 50% chance of success? That's the skill system working better than intended. Most DCs are well below 15. The system is balanced around DC 10 being "Things most people have a 50/50 shot at"

Rules need to reflect the rules. Seriously. If don't have to roll for something, it should be because, by the rules, you succeed on a one. Not because, by the rules, you might succeed 15% more often so screw rolling. We don't need different resolution mechanics for success in the same situation using the same skill based on who is doing it (unless they have some feat that grants advantage, or a take 20 or something)."Succeeding on a 1" is NOT something that should ever happen, really. And the only time you're supposed to roll is if there's something crazy going on and failure contributes meaningfully to the situation. That is the rule spelled out in the DMG (And emphasized more than the DCs). When you're rolling, the d20 doesn't represent your character's ability - it represents the million-and-one background details going on that can't be tracked that can influence a roll one way or another.

Your acrobat character? Can jump as often as he wants. There isn't a flat DC-for-distance. When it comes to trick jumps, he has an advantage others don't when trying to pull them off.

Conan arm wrestling Tiny Tim, in EVERY edition, is a flat strength score comparison. If they were trying to grapple, it would be a different situation because you throw in the chaos of combat: Maybe TT managed to hit Conan in a sensitive spot and weaken his grip. Maybe TT manages to squirm out of Conan's grip - but most likely, because a grapple lasts several rounds, Conan has an appreciably larger modifier, and more HP, Conan will win - but a Grapple is not an arm-wrestling competition.

Maybe a contest of strength like Ring the Bell? There's a chance that despite his strength, Tiny Tim manages to hit the pad just right, and muster a surprise burst of strength. Maybe Conan glances off the edge of the target, or has one arm working against the other (But generally, the higher STR person would just autopass by virtue of having a greater strength score).

Seerow

2013-12-31, 12:24 PM

A 35% improvement in success rate seems pretty good to me, actually. I'm not sure what that chart was trying to prove?

I'm confused because you say this then follow up with multiple paragraphs about how you want your skills to be more reliable.

Personally, I don't like Take 10 as a solution. It does work in making trivializing early tasks easier, but in any of the DDN skill systems it creates a weird dissonance where you're massively better at early tasks and still suck at high end tasks. Like if you introduce the ability to take 10, then the level 1 character is looking at a 45% or so chance of success at a DC20, and a level 10 or so character who can take 10 has a 100%. Okay, that much is good. But now when you look ahead to the DC25, the level 1 character has a 20% chance of success, and the level 10 character is still only at 30%

Basically take 10 has this weird effect where you are either amazingly awesome at something and can't fail, or are going to fail the majority of the time. There is no real granularity there. You don't get something you succeed at always, stuff you succeed at the majority of the time, stuff that is a challenge for you, and stuff that's nearly impossible for you. You get stuff that you always succeed at, and stuff that's nearly impossible. That's not really fun. It's better than not having anything at all, because it lets you at least trivialize low end tasks, but it doesn't make you any better with high end tasks.

But to answer your actual question, as far as I am aware, no, Take 10 is not in next except maybe as a rogue class feature. (I know it was there as a rogue feature in earlier packets, not sure if it was still there for the final packet.)

Edit:

DC 18 (A difficult check) being close to 50% chance of success? That's the skill system working better than intended. Most DCs are well below 15. The system is balanced around DC 10 being "Things most people have a 50/50 shot at"

The DC18 is a close to 50% chance of success at level 1. The problem is that gaining 20 levels doesn't improve that 50% a meaningful amount, bull**** numbers spinning aside ("oh look you went from 50% to 75%, that's a 50% increase!").

Scow2

2013-12-31, 12:34 PM

The level 1 character against a DC 25 has less than a 5% chance of success (unless he's a rogue, and rogues are supposed to be reliable at common tasks and capable of pulling off crazy stunts better than anyone else). You are wanting skills to scale faster than they have any right to.

Actually... D&D Next doesn't have "skills" like 3.5 at all. Instead, it has ability checks. Skills in D&D Next are binary - either you can do something, or you can't, and are acquired through Background traits, class, proficiency, and leveling up. Ability checks are a different beast entirely, but being trained in a skill gives what's closest to a synergy bonus to ability checks related to the skill.

I'll have to double-check the packet to see where this sort of thing applies.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 12:39 PM

The DC18 is a close to 50% chance of success at level 1. The problem is that gaining 20 levels doesn't improve that 50% a meaningful amount, bull**** numbers spinning aside ("oh look you went from 50% to 75%, that's a 50% increase!").That's a feature, not a bug. A level 1 character is a proficient adventurer capable of doing what he's supposed to. You don't have to suffer through 8 levels of Suckage in D&D Next just to be able to do what you wanted to do from the start. Higher levels let you get slightly but appreciably better at it. And it's not 'Bull**** number spinning" - it's the actual, relevant increase in how frequently you can pull off a stunt. Succeeding 15 times in a 20-point set is a 50% increase over succeeding 10 times in a 20-point set. You are NOT entitled to succeeding 20 times in a 20 point set.

Seerow

2013-12-31, 12:40 PM

Actually... D&D Next doesn't have "skills" like 3.5 at all. Instead, it has ability checks. Skills in D&D Next are binary - either you can do something, or you can't, and are acquired through Background traits, class, proficiency, and leveling up.

If this is the route you're going, things are even worse from my perspective, because now your only improvement is from attribute, which doesn't necessarily improve at all over 20 levels, and at best is gaining +2 or so for your primary attribute. And now no character ever is more than 25% apart from another.

Like why would you even make this argument if you're trying to convince me I'm wrong with my concern that skills aren't scaling enough?

Your whole argument seems to be you don't care if they ever scale, and that's fine, but you have to realize that is a ****ty way to model anything ever in a level based system where you are expected to improve at what you're doing when you level up.

That's a feature, not a bug. A level 1 character is a proficient adventurer capable of doing what he's supposed to. You don't have to suffer through 8 levels of Suckage in D&D Next just to be able to do what you wanted to do from the start. Higher levels let you get slightly but appreciably better at it. And it's not 'Bull**** number spinning" - it's the actual, relevant increase in how frequently you can pull off a stunt. Succeeding 15 times in a 20-point set is a 50% increase over succeeding 10 times in a 20-point set. You are NOT entitled to succeeding 20 times in a 20 point set.

In the end you are still succeeding 25% of the time where you would have failed before. Just like it's not awesome when you go from succeeding on a 20 to succeeding on a 19-20, because it's still only a 5% increase despite having your success increased 100%.

And no, in other skill systems there is no 8 levels of suckage. If you started a 3e character with a +7 or 8 in a skill, going for a DC15-20 task, how is that different from a 5e character with +3+1d6 in a skill, going for a DC15-20 task?

The only difference is in 3e there are higher DC tasks available that you can also accomplish, and in DDN there are higher DC tasks that you will almost never be able to do with real reliability.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 12:47 PM

Seerow

2013-12-31, 12:59 PM

Getting new tricks and tools to do what you want to do IS getting better at what you're doing as you level up. You don't need a +(2xLevel) modifier to every roll to get better. And if you start out completely incompetent at what you're doing, that's a bug in the system (Even though 3.5 had this in spades without specialized optimization... such as a Ranger that can't even feed his party traveling overland at level 1. Or a TWFer not being able to hit the broad side of a barn)

But you don't get any more tricks and tools than you did in older editions. At the beginning of the playtest when they introduced bounded accuracy, what you describe is exactly what they promised. Lots of cool new tricks as you level up to make you qualitatively better instead of quantitatively better.

This never materialized. You cannot base your argument on something that provably never happened. You don't gain new uses of a skill as you level up. You don't gain more class features, tricks, or spells when you level up. In fact, across the board you tend to get fewer of ALL of these things than a comparable 3.X or even 4e character. And then you also get non-scaling numbers as well, because DDN is for people who hate high level play, and screw anyone who actually enjoyed high level characters being as capable as the fluff indicates.

If we actually had gotten more options with leveling up, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. If a Fighter with climb trained eventually gained things like the ability to climb upside, down, climb at double normal speed, etc. It'd be no problem. If the Rogue with perception trained could start seeing invisible stuff, or ignore illusions, etc, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But that's not what happened. That would be something actually new and interesting. Instead, what we got is a watered down 3rd edition where all of your class features are fewer and less impactful, your skills never scale, you have to choose between feats and ability scores, and your general capability pretty much remains unchanged across all levels, with the big difference from a level coming from HP so you can survive more as you level (and even here it's obviously nothing new).

Perseus

2013-12-31, 01:09 PM

Scow2

2013-12-31, 01:16 PM

What I guess is that the current skill system only show raw talent and not training.

Having raw talent will get you so far, but training will take you further than raw talent.

I would like to see an ability score talent system that can do all these skills but then give us a way to train our characters, and no, advantage isn't training. Getting luckier when performing a task doesn't mean you are better at the skill. This also applies to any +xdy bonus, that isn't training or higher ability, this is luck.

However I dont want to see 3.5 where I can not roll and still beat any non-epic skill DC.
Actually, additional XdY does do a decent job representing skill because it increases reliability of a skill without overemphasizing the exaggerated ends. - the difference in difficulty between a DC 18 and 20 task is NOT identical to the difference between a DC 10 and DC 12, or DC 5 and DC 7.

Joe the Rat

2013-12-31, 01:21 PM

It's too bad we're locked into the d20. The only way you can reduce the swinginess to make easy tasks easy for everyone and difficult tasks only possible to the experts is with numbers large enough to start making the die itself irrelevant. Mind you, I think they actually undersold the range here - if proficiency bonuses ran a little longer (say up to +10), you might find a happy functional medium, with the right DCs. This would force a wider bounding - unless you're okay worth DC 30 "impossible" tasks beingpossible 25% of the time to a well-attributed 20th level expert.

How can we rework the probability curves to get the right success rates for easy / not-so-easy / difficult / in your dreams levels of difficulty for each level of ability?

What happens if we throw advantage/disadvantage into the mix in regard to proficiency? Either granting advantage to proficient (or "highly proficient"), or assigning disadvantage to the non-proficient? Ignoring how they of the seashore intend A/D usage for skills, would the shift in the curve be enough to generate a set of with acceptable success levels?

What happens if we white wolf it? Difficulty as a measure of DC and required successes (in a 'roll x successes before you roll y failures' approach)?

Jacob.Tyr

2013-12-31, 01:22 PM

I
Personally, I don't like Take 10 as a solution. It does work in making trivializing early tasks easier, but in any of the DDN skill systems it creates a weird dissonance where you're massively better at early tasks and still suck at high end tasks. Like if you introduce the ability to take 10, then the level 1 character is looking at a 45% or so chance of success at a DC20, and a level 10 or so character who can take 10 has a 100%. Okay, that much is good. But now when you look ahead to the DC25, the level 1 character has a 20% chance of success, and the level 10 character is still only at 30%

Basically take 10 has this weird effect where you are either amazingly awesome at something and can't fail, or are going to fail the majority of the time. There is no real granularity there. You don't get something you succeed at always, stuff you succeed at the majority of the time, stuff that is a challenge for you, and stuff that's nearly impossible for you. You get stuff that you always succeed at, and stuff that's nearly impossible. That's not really fun. It's better than not having anything at all, because it lets you at least trivialize low end tasks, but it doesn't make you any better with high end tasks.

See, I'd like take 10 in addition to better scaling. At level 20 if you've built your character to be able to do something, I think you should be able to hit the highest DCs with a take 10 (or take 20). An epic warrior coming into contact with a hard door should, given no rush or distractions, be able to every time destroy that damned door.

The way it is now I don't think he even has a chance to break into a 60 year old slum at level 20. This is the issue I have with Scow's arguments. It's either "You do this because you just can" or "Yeah, good luck breaking into a cardboard box while a house cat is clawing your ankle". If you can "just do it" that should be a take 10 or the like, and you should still have a better than 50% chance of success if something bad is going on.

"Succeeding on a 1" is NOT something that should ever happen, really.

What's wrong with succeeding on a 1? The autofail on a 1 is the worst variant rule ever. I hate playing with it, and I'm not even sure that as given in the DMG for 3.x that it is supposed to apply to skills anyway.

And the only time you're supposed to roll is if there's something crazy going on and failure contributes meaningfully to the situation. That is the rule spelled out in the DMG (And emphasized more than the DCs).

Yeah, that's great. Except "something crazy going on" is pretty meaningless here. Is "something crazy" being in a city? Or do I autosucceed on streetwise, knowledge checks, diplomacy, etc no matter what so long as I'm not in combat? Is being in the library a crazy situation or do you just auto-succeed knowledge checks after six seconds of walking into the building? I consider a lot of things "crazy" that other people survive doing daily. People go sky diving quite frequently, they don't die 5% of the time. Is sky diving not a risky activity? I guess everyone just autosucceeds on it, and it's not a very exciting hobby.

On the "failure contributes meaningfully" part I think this is also a cop-out. If someone (the player) didn't think doing the task was meaningful, then why are they doing it? If doing the task is meaningful, then surely failing it is as well.

If you want auto-success, it needs to meaningfully just be in the way the system is set up. Yes, some things are a DC 1 or DC 0. That isn't bad, those things are just, well, so basic you can't fail. You never roll for them because failing them is absurd. As is, remedial tasks in Next are a DC 5 (based on someone elses statement, I don't recall this rule), which for anyone with proficiency is a guaranteed success.

I don't really think you want a DnD game, to be honest. How you're arguing makes it seem like a more narrative focused game is more your style. I don't disagree with this as a valid way to game, and it'd be wonderful if DnD had optional rules for that sort of system, but if I'm playing DnD I want the math to match up with the narrative and gameplay.

Whiteagle

2013-12-31, 01:37 PM

I think that this is a situation where the absolute percentage, rather than the relative percentage, should be considered.
Well that's just the nature of using a d20, success is determined in degrees of 5%.
It's better to think about a Bonus less as an increase in your ability to succeed a given task and more as a reduction in your chance to fail.

For example, a Character with no Bonus has a 100% chance to fail at a DC 21 roll, while one with a +1 only has a 95% chance to fail.

If you had something like mentioned previously where you go back to the skill die but instead of +die size gain an extra die, that would be nice.
Hey I can support multiple Skill Dice, but you have to realize...

If you had something where every time your skill proficiency improved, you could auto succeed at an additional category of tasks (so by the time you've got the +6 bonus you only actually have to roll for those DC35 checks), that would help (though it would still suck that you can only succeed on those checks ever as a rogue, and even then only if it favors your primary stat and is trained fully... and only 10% of the time. But it's something).
…+6 and +6d4 both have the same bottom boundary, but the latter has an upper boundary four times HIGHER.

The Difficulty math gets hard to pin down when you start exponentially expanding the result ranges.

But as it is? The skill system fails to provide meaningful progression to player characters. On top of that huge glaring issue brought to us courtesy of bounded accuracy, we also have a bunch of vague nebulously defined guidelines, such as what actually qualifies as a very hard DC? Why is breaking down a door something that supposedly requires a demigod? The world may never know. What happens when you fail a climb check? Ask your DM, the rules aren't going to tell you. And so on.
Uh, no, there is meaningful progression, you just don't want to see it because you hate bounded accuracy...

And we do actually have a guideline for a "Very Hard" DC, it's 25!
It's on the third page of the DM Guidelines:
Trivial - DC 5; Easy - DC 10; Moderate - DC 15; Hard - DC 20; Very Hard -DC 25; Formidable - DC 30; Nearly Impossible - DC 35
It also explains the level of competence required for each tier, as well as a box explaining how to determine your DCs.

... I think the latest playtest packet isn't testing skill progression size as much as it's testing the idea of a unified Proficiency bonus used on attacks, saves, and skill checks to speed up play and keep a character sheet simple.
Indeed, unlike Pathfinder or 3.x, you don't need to remember 20 different numbers and thus it reduces the amount of double checking you need to do during a turn.

For example, having some hybrid of this and 4e's half level could get you something resembling 3.x but with an RNG that is easier to constrain at any given level. Say characters gained 1/2 level to all of their combat related checks, and got to add this 1-6 modifier to things they're supposed to be really good at, and half that (round down) to things they're sort of good at.
Except it doesn't DO that, it just bloats out the Random Number God even MORE.

Again, your hatred of Bounded Accuracy is blinding you to the fact that the current Bonus Progression DOES work, it just doesn't have to EXPLODE like it did in previous editions because Difficulty Class DOES NOT FLUCTUATE WITH LEVEL!

Iron locks don't just increase their DC by 10 just because you got MORE awesome and, if you want more a difficult Picking attempt, you simply have to say that these are BETTER Locks.

Highly-trained people autosucceed at remedial tasks. A level 1 character is highly trained at what he does. You roll to try to pull off extraordinary stunts, like clinging to a clifface while under attack, or pulling off a mid-jump stunt, or pulling off Ben Hurr-style driving skills in a chariot race.

Characters being incapable of doing anything effective any decent amount of time is a conceit created from the godawful skill systems used in 3.5 and 4e.
I have to agree here.
Trivial is a DC of 5, meaning a decently trained Level 1 Character (+3 Stat Mod, +1 Prof Bonus) CAN NOT FAIL!

Easy is 10, so that's a 25% or 1 in 4 chance of failing, 75% chance of Success!

Hard is 20, 75% or 3 in 4 chance of failing, but 25% chance at succeeding at a task requiring "a lot of specialized training" for a Level 1 Character is pretty good if you ask me...

This never materialized. You cannot base your argument on something that provably never happened. You don't gain new uses of a skill as you level up. You don't gain more class features, tricks, or spells when you level up.
Actually...

From the Multiclass PDF:
"Proficiencies. You gain all the proficiencies of your new class when you multiclass."

Plus the Assassin Rogue gets Proficiency with the Disguise and Poisoner's Kits, in addition to any Proficiency you can gain via Feats...

1337 b4k4

2013-12-31, 01:51 PM

Ok, there seem to be a half dozen partial interpretations of how ability checks and skills work in the last playtest, so for clarity's sake, and so that we're all on the same page, here is the high level overview from the 9/19 packet, which I believe was the last packet:

All tasks are ability checks, based on your ability score. The base roll for a check is 1d20 + Ability Modifier

Ability modifiers are based on your score ((Score - 10) /2 round down).

Rolls can be modified by dis/advantage.

Rolls can also be modified by proficiency. You do not necessarily need to be proficient in an ability to roll. As the How to Play document gives the example, anyone can attempt Dex(Stealth), proficient characters get to add their proficiency bonus. Your proficiency bonus is determined by your class and level, ranging from +1 to +6 over the 20 levels, generally:

Level 1: +1
Level 3: +2
Level 7: +3
Level 11: +4
Level 15: +5
Level 19: +6

Additionally, Bards get 1/2 proficiency in all non proficient skills at level 5 and Rogues at level 1 gain expertise (+5 to any 4 proficient skills or tools) and gain the ability to take the higher of 10 or 1d20 on any ability check they get a proficiency bonus on at 11th level.

The How to Play document lists a number of example ability checks: "Attempt to climb a sheer cliff", "try to jump unusually long distances", "struggle to swim against treacherous currents", "Balance on a tightrope", "attempt to conceal yourself from enemies", "survive without food or water", "quaff and entire stein of ale in one go", etc etc. While there are exceptions, it is notable that a good majority of the tasks they give as examples are more than just simple climbs or drinks or balancing. They're already extraordinary acts, or their very specific version of acts "attempt to find information about X from the best source in town" rather than "attempt to find information about X". It's not explicitly said, but it certainly appears implicit that checks are for more than just tying your shoes and arm wrestling competitions.

The DMG goes a bit further into when and how to use checks. It states (emphasis mine):

When a player wants to take an action, it's often appropriate to just let the action succeed. ... Only call for a roll if you think it's worth taking the time for the rules to come into the flow of the game. Ask yourself two questions to aid your decision. Is the action being taken so easy, so free of stress or conflict, or so appropriate to the situation that there should be no chance of failure? "So Easy" should take into account the ability score associated with the intended action. It's easy for someone with a Strength score of 18 to flip over a table, though not easy for someone with a Strength 9.

It advises the DM that ultimately the DM has authority over the results and is free to ignore the dice for the sake of the game, noting that different play styles will lend to differing levels of reliance on the dice.

It then goes more into details on ability checks. It notes that ability checks should be called for whenever "a character attempts an action that has a significant chance of failure." It then provides a list of DCs from 5 (Trivial) to 15 (Moderate) to 35 (Nearly Impossible), with generalized information about how to determine this DC. For example, under DC 15 (Moderate) it says "A moderate task requires a slightly higher level of competence to accomplish. A character with a combination of natural aptitude and specialized training can accomplish a moderate task for often than not."

It then notes that some tasks may have specific tool or circumstance requirements and that without these, the character will either fail outright or should be given a very hard DC. This is another implicit statement that DCs are fluid, not static. It then goes on to mention that when calling for ability checks, invite players to describe their actions and reward cleverness with advantage or auto success.

Under multiple ability checks, the DMG notes that "In most cases" the only cost for failure is time.

The skills list provides a broad 4e style list of skills which your character can gain proficiency in by class or background ability. If you gain the same skill twice, you can choose another skill. It states that proficiency works as follows: "if you attempt to climb up a dangerous cliff, your Dungeon Master might ask you for a Strength (Athletics) check. If you are proficient in Athletics, you add your proficiency bonus to your Strength check." Your background also gives you proficiencies with up to three types of equipment, Most equipment allows you to add your proficiency bonus to checks involving that equipment when using the equipment. So if you're proficient with the climbers kit, you can add your proficiency again when using the kit, if you're proficient with artisan's tools, you can add your proficiency when using those tools to craft etc etc. In fact, it's worth noting that reading through the equipment list, it's very clear this stuff is more than just window dressing and is an important part of the skill system. For example, previously we had mentioned the rather crazy DC checks to break down doors, the portable ram gives a +4 bonus to such checks, and having someone help gives advantage.

Seerow

2013-12-31, 02:05 PM

"quaff and entire stein of ale in one go"

Please tell me this is a joke you threw in to check if anyone was actually reading your post.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 02:26 PM

And we do actually have a guideline for a "Very Hard" DC, it's 25!
It's on the third page of the DM Guidelines:
Trivial - DC 5; Easy - DC 10; Moderate - DC 15; Hard - DC 20; Very Hard -DC 25; Formidable - DC 30; Nearly Impossible - DC 35
It also explains the level of competence required for each tier, as well as a box explaining how to determine your DCs.
Keep in mind that the "Easy" means "The average Person has a 50/50 shot at getting it right" - it's NOT meant to represent a "Sure thing", and likewise, "Hard" is "You have to hope you get lucky to pull it off". Baseline competence is +0. Anything above that is a bonus.

The checks are supposed to be for Extraordinary things, not Ordinary ones. Someone proficient with a Climbing Kit can scale pretty much anything, and has a marked advantage over a nobody if what he's climbing is thrashing around, if he's under attack while climbing, or if something bad happens mid-climb.

DC 5 "Trivial" tasks are built in with an expected failure chance of 25% for a coommon person, if a check gets provoked - this would be stuff like Not Falling Down in a situation where you might fall down (Such as riding a horse in a joust, climbing a cliff or tree) or doing a 'routine' task with a sudden complication.

1337 b4k4

2013-12-31, 03:17 PM

Please tell me this is a joke you threw in to check if anyone was actually reading your post.

No, it's not a joke, nor does it seem that unreasonable to me. To start, there was no given DC and I would expect it to be low if you're calling for a roll, for two, I read it as "in one go" meaning drinking the whole glass in a single gulp. I mean, if you're going to have a beer drinking contest between the party dwarf and the town drunk, does it not seem unreasonable to call for DC checks, starting at DC 5 (or even lower) and adding to the DC for each additional beer? Again, the implication in the materials is you call for checks in extraordinary circumstances. You want to drink the beer you just ordered while you're relaxing by the fireside, no check. You haven't had a drink in 3 days, and you're in the tavern and you want to drink the beer of the guy in front of you while he looks away for a moment when you shout "look at that!" and point? That's probably going to take a DC check.

Pex

2013-12-31, 03:56 PM

"Succeeding on a 1" is NOT something that should ever happen, really. And the only time you're supposed to roll is if there's something crazy going on and failure contributes meaningfully to the situation. That is the rule spelled out in the DMG (And emphasized more than the DCs). When you're rolling, the d20 doesn't represent your character's ability - it represents the million-and-one background details going on that can't be tracked that can influence a roll one way or another.

There's the disconnect. I WANT the possibility of succeeding on a 1. I don't expect it at 1st level, but at some level > 1 I want the possibility my character is just that good he can't fail at some skill. I've earned the XP for the level and spent the game mechanics resources for the privilege when autosucceed on a 1 happens. This is for skills with set DCs. For opposed rolls, 1 is still not an autofail. I can still win if 1 + my modifiers is greater or equal to what my opponent rolled + his modifiers. That mechanic from 3E is a feature, not a bug. The mistake of the social skills was having them be set DCs instead of opposed rolls, ergo the Diplomancer.

Just to Browse

2013-12-31, 04:00 PM

Scow2

2013-12-31, 04:23 PM

They do not have take 10 rules last I checked.

Scow2, remedial tasks are what I call DC 10. Like high school math problems--common sense would have us believe that if you are doing math for a living, you should be able to do algebra and integration easy. But in DDN, even the Gods of Math would be unable to solve an algebra problem a quarter of the time.If you consider DC 10 to be remedial, you are giving tasks DCs that are far too high. Also, using Ability Checks to solve math is like trying to use Attack Rolls to cast spells in D&D 3.5 - you're using the wrong mechanic entirely.

A DC 10 is a task an untrained, average joe will succeed on more than half the time on his first attempt.

Seerow

2013-12-31, 04:28 PM

If you consider DC 10 to be remedial, you are giving tasks DCs that are far too high. Also, using Ability Checks to solve math is like trying to use Attack Rolls to cast spells in D&D 3.5 - you're using the wrong mechanic entirely.

A DC 10 is a task an untrained, average joe will succeed on more than half the time on his first attempt.

Does anyone else see the inherent contradiction in the first half of this post and the second half?

SassyQuatch

2013-12-31, 04:30 PM

Does anyone else see the inherent contradiction in the first half of this post and the second half?
Ooh ooh! Me!

NoldorForce

2013-12-31, 04:32 PM

I'm honestly wondering whether the system would do better by converting either to roll-under (and establishing appropriate modifiers for difficulty) or to a bell curve + modifiers vs. DC. Either sounds like it would be far better than this half-assed mess where the RNG range and variance are about as large as the targets.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 04:37 PM

A commoner succeeds on a remedial task significantly more than half the time. I probably should have phrased it as "A DC 10 is a task an average person will fail half the time"... but not entirely, because if it's something that requires specialized education, proficiency is required to attempt it at all, and if it's basic enough that someone without proficiency can attempt yet specialized enough to need at least some proficiency, it's with Disadvantage on the roll as well, dropping the chance of success even lower.

Yes, the system would do better with a 3d6 or 3d20-take-middle bell curve, but the point of the d20 is to exaggerate the chances of success and failure for dramatic effect.

NoldorForce

2013-12-31, 05:23 PM

Yes, the system would do better with a 3d6 or 3d20-take-middle bell curve, but the point of the d20 is to exaggerate the chances of success and failure for dramatic effect.The problem is that this isn't (and hasn't been for years) appropriate for the kind of game D&D has become.

It's fine if you have a game that has quick chargen and gameplay (like earlier editions were, but not since at least 3E if not 2E as well) so that failure is not a hindrance on the overall play. Sure, Joe Fighter died from a troll's bite, but the combat just finished (over in what, ten minutes?) and we can find someone to replace him in the next town. (I've not played it but I've heard the current edition of Gamma World works like this.)

It's also fine if failure is supposed to allow for something interesting to happen beyond "you didn't succeed", sort of like Fate or Dungeon World. If failure is to be common then it shouldn't bog the game down by walling down the story until a successful roll occurs. (See points 3 and 10 here (http://lookrobot.co.uk/11-ways-better-roleplayer-safe-work-version/) for a discussion of why "failure = no result" is a poor idea in general.)

But with the way D&D is built (and most likely will continue to be built) neither of those have really entered the designers' minds at all. If failure is neither easy to build from, nor quick to be mitigated, then a relatively high chance of failure is a massive glaring design flaw. Hell, Dark Souls is known (even lauded) for its difficulty, but it's also designed such that every death should be teaching you something. Additionally, bonfires are placed sufficiently close to one another that you'll never have too far to trek to your bloodstain. (Oh, and you keep everything but your currency when you respawn.) In contrast Mearls and co. are just practicing cargo cult game design - no one seems to have put in this kind of thought on how to build a game.

Scow2

2013-12-31, 05:33 PM

Usually, there is a result to failure - You're stuck having to try again another round, or you get yourself hurt (depending on the action). If it's something repeatable you don't roll!

When you want to break down a door and are trying to roll for it, it usually implies you're on a time limit of some sort. It's why rolling is restricted to extraordinary or contested actions.

Morty

2013-12-31, 05:34 PM

The problem is that this isn't (and hasn't been for years) appropriate for the kind of game D&D has become.

It's fine if you have a game that has quick chargen and gameplay (like earlier editions were, but not since at least 3E if not 2E as well) so that failure is not a hindrance on the overall play. Sure, Joe Fighter died from a troll's bite, but the combat just finished (over in what, ten minutes?) and we can find someone to replace him in the next town. (I've not played it but I've heard the current edition of Gamma World works like this.)

It's also fine if failure is supposed to allow for something interesting to happen beyond "you didn't succeed", sort of like Fate or Dungeon World. If failure is to be common then it shouldn't bog the game down by walling down the story until a successful roll occurs. (See points 3 and 10 here (http://lookrobot.co.uk/11-ways-better-roleplayer-safe-work-version/) for a discussion of why "failure = no result" is a poor idea in general.)

But with the way D&D is built (and most likely will continue to be built) neither of those have really entered the designers' minds at all. If failure is neither easy to build from, nor quick to be mitigated, then a relatively high chance of failure is a massive glaring design flaw. Hell, Dark Souls is known (even lauded) for its difficulty, but it's also designed such that every death should be teaching you something. Additionally, bonfires are placed sufficiently close to one another that you'll never have too far to trek to your bloodstain. (Oh, and you keep everything but your currency when you respawn.) In contrast Mearls and co. are just practicing cargo cult game design - no one seems to have put in this kind of thought on how to build a game.

Agreed. All those problems people discuss and argue about regarding task resolution are, I think, caused in good part by the combination of d20's swinginess and the binary result of success/failure. I've thought for a while that D&D needs some more granularity of result and more degrees of both successes and failures, if it is to stick with d20.

1337 b4k4

2013-12-31, 08:18 PM

They do not have take 10 rules last I checked.

Scow2, remedial tasks are what I call DC 10. Like high school math problems--common sense would have us believe that if you are doing math for a living, you should be able to do algebra and integration easy. But in DDN, even the Gods of Math would be unable to solve an algebra problem a quarter of the time.

Serious question:

Other than as a holdover from 3.x expectations, why should remedial tasks be DC 10? Seriously why are you wasting half your RNG on basic tasks that we all agree should be mostly auto succeed anyway? Frankly remedial tasks shouldn't have a DC at all. Why should you ever have to roll for basic tasks? Or perhaps put more succinctly why should remedial tasks have a DC of 10 and adventurers have the option of taking 10 rather than simply having remedial tasks have a DC of 0 or less?

TuggyNE

2013-12-31, 08:45 PM

Your complaint is that "I attack the weak point" isn't a complete system. But when you say moving to engage is fine, you reference something else. it's is a double standard; the thing you know intimately is fine despite any complexity but the thing you don't know isn't fine because... I don't even know.

The key there is that, like saying I attack, "I shoot the weak spot" is referencing the buildup in the hypothetical system. But okay, this one specific example doesn't appeal to you even though you've said the concept is sound. You want a different grain is all. That's fine, we don't need hypothetical examples here. I don't need to justify the concept, I just need to show how it works here, right?

In DDN, you get narrative inertia through proficiency, gear and background. A character with proficiency with lock picking can be expected to know how locks work. A character without, probably not.

The argument is that the game system uses a d20, and any creature has an ability score, so any creature can use the d20 and it's ability score to access skills and succeed x% of the time. People then go on to say that is stupid.

I say no, you cannot just say "I have a strength score, therefore I can 100% climb a hard cliff" or whatever the hell a five point twelve is. You need one thing in addition; you need to access the skill system with your attribute, a d20, and justification. You don't cast magic without spell casting (n.g.), you don't use the skill DCs and dice for adventurers without being an adventurer. Or having an alternate n.g. For it, such as being an NPC mountaineer (gains proficiency with climbing tools, say). The thing is, this system is deacriptive, not prescriptive. The noble background gave you retainers; they can't actually do anything though, without this concept, because they do not by default have attributes, can't have class levels and you have no actual political skill or clout. Technically, having the retainers able to achieve anything is a house rule. But that's stupid. It's supposed to be a set of keywords on which the DM can hang other parts of the game. Someone with that background gets Noble, Politics, Servants, and some other stuff as explicit keywords. Any systems that interface with it give that character weight, n.g., to interact with it. A priest can say to the DM "I am a priest, this religious guy will respect that and weigh my words higher" and the DMis supposed to say "yes", not "that's not in the rules, sorry, being a priest only gives you religion as a skill".

Compare to FATE, where characters have aspects, but a lot of the time, tagging a new aspect costs fate points. The idea of "I attack the weak point" costs nothing, has no downside, has no prerequisites, and is necessary for success: it is thus a tax solely on your ability to, out of character, remember arbitrary hoops to jump through. Someone who remembers or thinks up more arbitrary hoops will thus be more successful, not because their character is more skilled (the D&D way) nor yet because the narrative is in their favor (the FATE way), but because the player has better recall. That is what I am objecting to.

In contrast, saying "I move into melee range" has downsides (the inability to simultaneously move into melee with other enemies in different parts of the battlefield, risk of further attack, etc) and prerequisites (you have to be within a certain distance of the spot to move there). It is thus a meaningful choice.

Similarly, if D&DN had some sort of fate point/aspect thingy going on, you could doubtless come up with some good examples of using that. It doesn't. What it should probably stick with is the traditional setup of using things like circumstance modifiers and situational advantage to represent cases where some aspect of the situation can be better manipulated with certain choices and tradeoffs. But always-available sucker's choices like "do you attack the weak spot, or do you aim for the hardest scale you can see?" should be abandoned: they are not actually meaningful.

But no, you're saying a professional climber should succeed 100% at every roll, but is allowed to fail some rolls during an extended climb.

You need to either accept that a chance of "failure" on the d20 is okay because of the higher average and better spikes, and that climbing is an extended roll and not a one-and-done, or you need to specify that every extended action must be abstracted to a agile roll and the math needs to be balanced around the idea of one roll with life or death consequences in all situations.

Wasn't my clarification clear enough? It's impossible for the skilled climber to utterly fail*, but there is a range of "didn't succeed just yet" that their roll can easily fall into. And, of course, I did explicitly say that there should be multiple rolls that represent progress through the pitch.

Mind you, there are probably climbers (in fantasy if nowhere else) that should even auto-succeed in the fullest degree at a climb this difficult, without having to pause and adjust their grip or make multiple tries at a tough handhold or whatever. In such cases, they wouldn't even need to roll*, since there would be no delay anyway.

*Barring exceptional circumstance penalties.

A 35% improvement in success rate seems pretty good to me, actually. I'm not sure what that chart was trying to prove?

That math is hard. :smalltongue:

More seriously, that if the greater skill of a max level character matters for a given task only, say, 35% of the time relative to a level 1 character, then those 20 levels didn't buy them much, since the majority of the time a beginning adventurer can do just as well with the same roll as the most experienced champions.

Mind you, same task: the things being accomplished stay mostly the same, too.

First off... in 3e, the DCs are 15-30, weighted toward 22.

In 3.x, the lowest Core base DC is a -10. That's right, negative ten. There are a few DC 0s, some DC 5s, a fair number of DC 10s and 11s and 12s, and then you get into the 15s and up. As such, I strongly recommend you recheck your assumptions based on what the system actually says, and has said for some thirteen years.

The way it is now I don't think he even has a chance to break into a 60 year old slum at level 20. This is the issue I have with Scow's arguments. It's either "You do this because you just can" or "Yeah, good luck breaking into a cardboard box while a house cat is clawing your ankle". If you can "just do it" that should be a take 10 or the like, and you should still have a better than 50% chance of success if something bad is going on.

Basically, yes.

Again, your hatred of Bounded Accuracy is blinding you to the fact that the current Bonus Progression DOES work, it just doesn't have to EXPLODE like it did in previous editions because Difficulty Class DOES NOT FLUCTUATE WITH LEVEL!

Iron locks don't just increase their DC by 10 just because you got MORE awesome and, if you want more a difficult Picking attempt, you simply have to say that these are BETTER Locks.

No previous edition actually recommended that DCs fluctuate with levels, not even 4e with its much-maligned and much-misused Page 42. Instead, they all did exactly what you recommend: used more difficult challenges at higher levels. These challenges were substantially and meaningfully harder; there were lower-level characters that simply could not manage them. (Try a DC 40 at level 1 without serious cheese: it's not going to happen.) That was by design, in the same way that you don't really expect a level 1 character to slay balrogs.

In 5e, however, most of those more difficult challenges have a very broad range of applicability: DC 20 is going to be a meaningful challenge for just about every character of every level. It's not impossible for any character with at least a +0, but it's never an auto-success either.

This is, of course, by design: all characters are almost equally useful in all situations. Well, except when it's time to say "no, you can't roll for this because reasons", I guess. *obligatory "and when everyone is special, no one is" speech*

Perseus

2013-12-31, 11:33 PM

Random question

Why not make skills tied to the saving throw system/magic system a bit more than what they already are?

Lets use move silently and listen.

Untrained Move Silently: Reflex Save versus Listen DC of opposing creature.
Trained Move Silently: Reflex Save +2 versus Listen DC of opposing creature. Special: Dex mod is at minimum, treated as 0 for the purposes of this reflex save.

Untrained Listen DC: 8 + Wisdom Modifier
Trained Listen DC: 8 + Wisdom Modifier (minimum 0) + 2

If you want to listen to your surroundings then you say "I'm listening for anything in the area, the DC is XX" then the DM rolls (or has pre-rolled) a reflex save for anything in the area.

At certain levels you can gain a +1 to however many skills to a maximum of +3 or +6 (however the math works out for the best).

Perhaps have a limit on what the DC can be so that if later stacking becomes a RAW problem, stacking Wisdom with Intelligence won't give you a crazy high DC. Say like the highest a DC can be is 17 (8 base + 5 max modifier + 5 max skill bonus), then if you have stacking (which I think they may allow eventually) it won't really hurt anything.

A Knowledge skill could just be a Will Save (Special: Replace Wisdom Mod with Int Mod, minimum 0) versus a DC of 8 + Specific Creature Bonus to figure out info on the creature.

Jump/Climb/Swim skills would just give a new movement speed that starts off at something like 15 feet then grows until it matches your base speed. Want to jump further than your jump speed? Then use a double movement to jump further, however there will always be a max distance you can jump and you will know it (like Olympic athletic jumpers, they know their max jumping distance). Rinse and repeat for swim and climb.

russdm

2013-12-31, 11:38 PM

Perseus

2013-12-31, 11:47 PM

An aside from the Math Death Dueling, What campaign settings seem likely to be supported or does someone want to see supported?

I want to see Dark Sun supported for the new edition. It would be interesting to see. I liked 4th Edition's dark sun, since 3rd/3.5 was rather crappy.

Did 3.0 ever support Darksun officially?

They need to bring back spell jammer, darksun (at least the cannibal halflings), planescape, and... Any that has Incarnum... Which would probably be some blue plane of existence with weird Eiffel65 music playing all the time.

russdm

2014-01-01, 12:27 AM

Did 3.0 ever support Darksun officially?

It wasn't and the stuff had to be converted by fans and there was some material in Dragon/Dungeon magazines. There was no official WotC material, so it was crappy. Same thing with Dragon Lance, which had a campaign setting, then everything else was third party and there was never anything for 4E for it, as far as a i know.

SiuiS

2014-01-01, 04:40 AM

Personally, I don't like Take 10 as a solution. It does work in making trivializing early tasks easier, but in any of the DDN skill systems it creates a weird dissonance where you're massively better at early tasks and still suck at high end tasks. Like if you introduce the ability to take 10, then the level 1 character is looking at a 45% or so chance of success at a DC20, and a level 10 or so character who can take 10 has a 100%. Okay, that much is good. But now when you look ahead to the DC25, the level 1 character has a 20% chance of success, and the level 10 character is still only at 30%

What? No. That's either a communication or math fail. If you're guaranteed a certain Number compared to another certain number and neither changes, there is no "45% chance", you either succeed or fail 100% of the time.

That's a feature, not a bug. A level 1 character is a proficient adventurer capable of doing what he's supposed to. You don't have to suffer through 8 levels of Suckage in D&D Next just to be able to do what you wanted to do from the start. Higher levels let you get slightly but appreciably better at it. And it's not 'Bull**** number spinning" - it's the actual, relevant increase in how frequently you can pull off a stunt. Succeeding 15 times in a 20-point set is a 50% increase over succeeding 10 times in a 20-point set. You are NOT entitled to succeeding 20 times in a 20 point set.

Aye.

It's too bad we're locked into the d20.

Also aye.

The only way you can reduce the swinginess to make easy tasks easy for everyone and difficult tasks only possible to the experts is with numbers large enough to start making the die itself irrelevant. Mind you, I think they actually undersold the range here - if proficiency bonuses ran a little longer (say up to +10), you might find a happy functional medium, with the right DCs. This would force a wider bounding - unless you're okay worth DC 30 "impossible" tasks beingpossible 25% of the time to a well-attributed 20th level expert.

I think everyone can agree that with the right DCs, the system can function. I think the problem is legacy memory. Recalling past attempts at DCs and skill scaling from this game's packets and from other games is giving a skewed view of things. I think the first step to fixing the skills is knowing which damn system is in use.

Ok, there seem to be a half dozen partial interpretations of how ability checks and skills work in the last playtest, so for clarity's sake, and so that we're all on the same page, here is the high level overview from the 9/19 packet, which I believe was the last packet:

All tasks are ability checks, based on your ability score. The base roll for a check is 1d20 + Ability Modifier

Ability modifiers are based on your score ((Score - 10) /2 round down).

Rolls can be modified by dis/advantage.

Rolls can also be modified by proficiency. You do not necessarily need to be proficient in an ability to roll. As the How to Play document gives the example, anyone can attempt Dex(Stealth), proficient characters get to add their proficiency bonus. Your proficiency bonus is determined by your class and level, ranging from +1 to +6 over the 20 levels, generally:

Level 1: +1
Level 3: +2
Level 7: +3
Level 11: +4
Level 15: +5
Level 19: +6

Additionally, Bards get 1/2 proficiency in all non proficient skills at level 5 and Rogues at level 1 gain expertise (+5 to any 4 proficient skills or tools) and gain the ability to take the higher of 10 or 1d20 on any ability check they get a proficiency bonus on at 11th level.

The How to Play document lists a number of example ability checks: "Attempt to climb a sheer cliff", "try to jump unusually long distances", "struggle to swim against treacherous currents", "Balance on a tightrope", "attempt to conceal yourself from enemies", "survive without food or water", "quaff and entire stein of ale in one go", etc etc. While there are exceptions, it is notable that a good majority of the tasks they give as examples are more than just simple climbs or drinks or balancing. They're already extraordinary acts, or their very specific version of acts "attempt to find information about X from the best source in town" rather than "attempt to find information about X". It's not explicitly said, but it certainly appears implicit that checks are for more than just tying your shoes and arm wrestling competitions.

The DMG goes a bit further into when and how to use checks. It states (emphasis mine):

It advises the DM that ultimately the DM has authority over the results and is free to ignore the dice for the sake of the game, noting that different play styles will lend to differing levels of reliance on the dice.

It then goes more into details on ability checks. It notes that ability checks should be called for whenever "a character attempts an action that has a significant chance of failure." It then provides a list of DCs from 5 (Trivial) to 15 (Moderate) to 35 (Nearly Impossible), with generalized information about how to determine this DC. For example, under DC 15 (Moderate) it says "A moderate task requires a slightly higher level of competence to accomplish. A character with a combination of natural aptitude and specialized training can accomplish a moderate task for often than not."

It then notes that some tasks may have specific tool or circumstance requirements and that without these, the character will either fail outright or should be given a very hard DC. This is another implicit statement that DCs are fluid, not static. It then goes on to mention that when calling for ability checks, invite players to describe their actions and reward cleverness with advantage or auto success.

Under multiple ability checks, the DMG notes that "In most cases" the only cost for failure is time.

The skills list provides a broad 4e style list of skills which your character can gain proficiency in by class or background ability. If you gain the same skill twice, you can choose another skill. It states that proficiency works as follows: "if you attempt to climb up a dangerous cliff, your Dungeon Master might ask you for a Strength (Athletics) check. If you are proficient in Athletics, you add your proficiency bonus to your Strength check." Your background also gives you proficiencies with up to three types of equipment, Most equipment allows you to add your proficiency bonus to checks involving that equipment when using the equipment. So if you're proficient with the climbers kit, you can add your proficiency again when using the kit, if you're proficient with artisan's tools, you can add your proficiency when using those tools to craft etc etc. In fact, it's worth noting that reading through the equipment list, it's very clear this stuff is more than just window dressing and is an important part of the skill system. For example, previously we had mentioned the rather crazy DC checks to break down doors, the portable ram gives a +4 bonus to such checks, and having someone help gives advantage.

Thank you for this. It's nice to have hard data in the open.

So they clearly are moving towards narrative weight and are building items and proficiency to grant it. That's good to be certain of, although I will admit to being worried about how successfully they will manage it. The WotC people are just legitimate d20 heartbreaker makers; I don't think most of them have even conceived of non d20 games and concepts long enough to have a grasp of them.

Please tell me this is a joke you threw in to check if anyone was actually reading your post.

Why? A "skill" is an attribute check with a situational bonus. Being able to chug a quart of beer is a (minor) feat of endurance – an easy con check.

Reprioritize. Skills are not distinct from ability checks. Skills are lists of bonuses you get to ability checks.

There's the disconnect. I WANT the possibility of succeeding on a 1.

But the lack of what you want doesn't make this an objectively bad system. Nor a broken one.

.

Scow2, remedial tasks are what I call DC 10. Like high school math problems--common sense would have us believe that if you are doing math for a living, you should be able to do algebra and integration easy. But in DDN, even the Gods of Math would be unable to solve an algebra problem a quarter of the time.

Why would remedial tasks be so high?

And of the few mathematicians I know, they screw up and have just as hard a time as non mathematicians. They just keep going and proof-checking until it's right.

Does anyone else see the inherent contradiction in the first half of this post and the second half?

Yes.

Usually, there is a result to failure - You're stuck having to try again another round, or you get yourself hurt (depending on the action). If it's something repeatable you don't roll!

When you want to break down a door and are trying to roll for it, it usually implies you're on a time limit of some sort. It's why rolling is restricted to extraordinary or contested actions.

"You don't succeed this turn" is not a result. You're right, you shouldn't roll. If there is a stuck door, and there is no consequence for failure – you aren't being pursued, you aren't poisoned, etc – then the door opens after being described as stuck.

But all that is lost because the first thing you said was that simply failing and having to try again was a result.

. The idea of "I attack the weak point" costs nothing, has no downside, has no prerequisites, and is necessary for success:

I am aware of the non-D&D example I said we shouldn't discuss because you have the concept and is not relevant to D&D beyond that doesn't work for D&D.

Note that the example I have is a canon play from dungeon world, though; it's not nearly as arbitrary as you want to imagine because there is a system behind it for generating the necessary "arbitrary hoops".

Just like D&D, in that regard. Traveling, adventuring, acquiring power and gear, are all just arbitrary hoops thrown in to keep you away from the BBEG. But they're also the point of the game.

Wasn't my clarification clear enough?

No, because it is inherently contradictory; you are using your pitch, that a climber should always succeed eventually, to disprove someone saying that succeeding eventually is sufficient.

The argument was that a mountain climber will falter (fail a few rolls) but eventually succeed (pass enough rolls). You said no, they must succeed 100% of the time (implicitly on every roll because of the refutation) and then also said it's okay to fail a few rolls so long as they always succeed at the overall task. Either your argument or it's application were misleading/wrong.

I realize now though that I'm quibbling: we both agree that the task of climbing the mountain is more important than any roll which composes that task, but I feel it's important to establish the break in inertia. I dislike someone being agreed with in a way that's designed to make them look like they are wrong and the agreer is right, when both are right.

More seriously, that if the greater skill of a max level character matters for a given task only, say, 35% of the time relative to a level 1 character, then those 20 levels didn't buy them much, since the majority of the time a beginning adventurer can do just as well with the same roll as the most experienced champions.

Is this really a problem, though? Is it better to have beginners succeed more often or to have beginners fail more often?

In 3.x, the lowest Core base DC is a -10. That's right, negative ten. There are a few DC 0s, some DC 5s, a fair number of DC 10s and 11s and 12s, and then you get into the 15s and up. As such, I strongly recommend you recheck your assumptions based on what the system actually says, and has said for some thirteen years.

This is disingenuous though, because for every DC 5 you roll, you'll roll ten DC 15s. The game is structured more towards them.

In 5e, however, most of those more difficult challenges have a very broad range of applicability: DC 20 is going to be a meaningful challenge for just about every character of every level. It's not impossible for any character with at least a +0, but it's never an auto-success either.

I'm still confused why this is bad. Different strokes?

Just to Browse

2014-01-01, 05:25 AM

Does anyone else see the inherent contradiction in the first half of this post and the second half?

It also fails to address the standing point of "math geniuses still regularly fail at things that people with no training can figure out most of the time".

SassyQuatch

2014-01-01, 07:18 AM

Wamyen

2014-01-01, 09:00 AM

So far I see Fighters that don't play like a manga (I had to resist the urge to shout my attacks every time I played fourth edition) Monks and Bards that are viable character options without tons of magic items, splatbooks or good gaming the system, Wizards whose power curve has been managed by limiting the number of their phenominal cosmic powers per day but kept interesting my not completely nerfing the powers they do have, feats that are meaningful choices, magic items (the awarding of which is basically the quintessence of DM fiat) that are powerful and meaningful and most importantly in my book Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatore are fixing the Forgotten Realms and returning the stories they write to some semblance of what they used to be. If you're a wizard you probably shouldn't engage with a death knight in melee combat, if you're not trained in underwater basket weaving you can't underwater basket weave, even if trained if you are put under stress while trying to climb Toril's very own equvalent of the grand canyon you just MIGHT fall to your death (when veteran climbers fall to their deaths every single year no matter how experienced they might be, usually on something they thought would be a routine climb). I don't really see a problem with any of these things. Adventurers are mortals. They will fail at things every so often. Arguing about DC's and "You got your 3rd edition on my 4th edition" isn't going to acomplish much of anything other than maybe getting this forum locked. Put aside your preconceptions guys, and just look at the facts at hand. I liked 3rd edition, but I'm not going to let it blind me to something that I could potentially have fun with. That would be pretty closed minded don't you think?

1337 b4k4

2014-01-01, 10:07 AM

It also fails to address the standing point of "math geniuses still regularly fail at things that people with no training can figure out most of the time".

No they don't. Math geniuses auto succeed without extraordinary circumstances and pressures. The difference is, unlike in 3.x where "math genius" is defined as "20 ranks in algebra, 20 ranks in calculus, 50 ranks in basic math and 22 ranks in Education(Math)" all of which you had to buy up front at character creation or invest in over time to the detriment of any other development, D&D Next reduces all of that to: "I'm a math genius" and that statement means something, while allowing you to invest your character resources into general fields of improvement. Basically in D&D next, you tell your DM "I want my fighter to be a math genius" and your DM says "Ok" and your fighter is a math genius, and you can get on with making your fighter more or less proficient in general areas as you think is appropriate rather than having to waste time ensuring that within the system, you maintain "math genius" abilities.

Scow2

2014-01-01, 12:40 PM

It also fails to address the standing point of "math geniuses still regularly fail at things that people with no training can figure out most of the time".

Another example.

-JimBob is the son of peasant farmers, he is smart but never had any real education.
-James Roberts is raised by wizards and given the best education. He too is smart.
-A math test is plopped in front of them both. Both now being first level and having roughly the same cognitive capacity the results average out to be almost the same despite the wide discrepancy in practical knowledge.

I would call that objectively bad system building. For any resemblance of accuracy it requires a DM saying "nuh-uh" to JimBob or making up bonuses for James Robert. The other option is also bad by making up an arbitrary sliding scale based on how difficult the DM feels that any challenge is for every single person.

Because let's face facts. Level-based systems are designed to scale at least somewhat linearly. Level 1 shouldn't be capable of mid- to high-tier feats, that's why they are level 1. Level 20 shouldn't be held back by those same feats, that's why they are level 20.

Heck, most classless systems have the common sense to scale better than Next. 5-point Fudge has better skill scaling, and that's a game you can print out on a few cue cards.You do gain linear scaling, though it's slower in D&D Next than it was in 3.5, allowing players to level up and get better without causing the game to meltdown like it did in 3.5. And, you gain significantly better capability in combat prowess, which is the primary means of advancement.

"Math Genius" is not a skill at all, for good reason. It wasn't a skill in 3.5, it wasn't a skill in 4e, it wasn't an NWP in 2e. It doesn't matter. Can we please use something that is a skill?

If it matters so much, then in D&D Next, our wizard friend has a background with the "Educated" perk, that makes him able to solve complex math. And, if JimBob were truly Intelligent, he would have reinvented arithmetic, algebra, and/or calculus without formal education, all before the age of 15.

"You don't succeed this turn" is not a result. You're right, you shouldn't roll. If there is a stuck door, and there is no consequence for failure – you aren't being pursued, you aren't poisoned, etc – then the door opens after being described as stuck.

But all that is lost because the first thing you said was that simply failing and having to try again was a result."You Don't Succeed This Turn" can be a result if there are time pressures, such as "We need to get through this stuck door before the Dragon Of Fire burns us all to death!" or in some act of crazy party coordination.

This is disingenuous though, because for every DC 5 you roll, you'll roll ten DC 15s. The game is structured more towards them.And a lot of those DC 15's are actually DC 25's, because DC 15 is "Barest baseline" and there's a +10 slapped on to actually get the skill to function in the way you want it to.